well, I had a lovely laptop, t’was nice, until recently. The laptop is a DV2000 series, with a 8400GS 256MB NVIDIA Graphics GPU, the actual dv2570es.
On Monday, I got my first wake up call, in the form of a corrupted graphics screen, I thought at first it was the NVIDIA driver I use on my gnu/linux fedora 9 setup, turns out, that is not the case. What I was getting is this, taken from my phone camera:
linux boot process, showing corruption
As you can see, the screen is totally corrupted, what happens is thus: the pattern that you see is not one of those optical effects, or problems with the phone camera, it’s an actual representation of the screen, you can see the top and bottom, there is garbage, but this is before you get to the serious corruption stage, I will add more pictures when I get the chance to catch the laptop doing it.
A step by step of what usually happens is like this:
1. you see a blue line from top to bottom, perhaps in the middle
2. you see another and then another
3. you move the mouse and everything it touches, gets corrupted
4. move and more lines, corruption and then perhaps your computer is locked up
5. as time passes, more corruption happens, but this isnt because you did anything, it’s basically just going bananas
6. you arrive at a point where the screen stops updating and you’re forced the reboot
However, when you reboot, the corruption is still present, I have it on the BIOS screen and even when I was booting into Windows Vista (to check whether it was a linux problem). Here is a screenshot of the corrupted vista bootup screen, it happens to be the second time I try to boot it, thats why it’s displaying the “your computer didnt start properly, rescue or continue normally” screen
Here is a screenshot of the BIOS screen, still corrupted.
BIOS screen showing corruption
After a while, it goes away and I’m using the computer to do this blog entry now, but what I found was that the more you use your computer, the more you run into this problem, what I found in the end was that NVIDIA actually KNEW this situation existed and yet still sold the chips to laptop and desktop builders who in turn, sold them to me. So for me, this is SERIOUS BUSINESS.
Here is the story, it’s the most recently version of it anyway:
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/09/10/nvidia_chip_defect_lawsuit/
The worst part about this is that I think my warrenty JUST RAN OUT and basically I have no warrenty on the laptop at all, apart from maybe a “try to get it repaired for free and embarass them by telling them i know their dirty little secret” trick, see it it works.
I will end by showing the other images that I had for this problem, but if you have images of problems, why don’t you make a comment and let me know, show an image of the problem, lets make a catalogue of the problem so that everyone can compare themselves to our problems.
Here are some more images of the problem
#1 by mr blobby on September 11, 2008 - 8:44 pm
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Try looking @ charlie dergimiggiigigans rants and detailed info on theinquirer.net
#2 by chris.alex.thomas on September 12, 2008 - 12:52 am
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Thanks, I’ve just read all the articles on that site about the problem, very in depth information, it’s going to be hard to turn me down from a free repair now, it’s pretty clear that I bought a defective laptop and that this is not going to be my problem if I can help it!
Everyone! send in your pictures, showing examples of this problem!
#3 by Nottledim on September 12, 2008 - 9:42 am
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The worst part about this is that I think my warrenty JUST RAN OUT and basically I have no warrenty on the laptop at all, apart from maybe a “try to get it repaired for free and embarass them by telling them i know their dirty little secret” trick, see it it works.
If you bought this in the UK then the warranty is not important. The sale of goods act gives you pretty clear protection against this type of thing. Contact local trading standards office for advice. This is the seller’s responsibility rather than the manufacturer’s so take the matter up with the people you bought it from.
Make sure you know what you are asking for before you start. eg: a replacement with a different chipset, a refund or whatever.
N.B. IANAL
Best of luck.
#4 by chris on September 12, 2008 - 10:24 am
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I think that might be the problem, that I bought it in Barcelona, I live there and basically the customer support in spain is awful, basically you’re treated like a cash machine with legs and they cheat, steal and basically do what they can to tell you to fuck off elsewhere, thats the level of support we get here.
So, unless I get a monkey who can be easily manipulated into doing what I want, I’ll be screwed, if I get me a super slick salesman, I’ll be stuffed.
#5 by Mitchell on September 21, 2008 - 1:24 am
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I have the same problem, and as of now, HP is not honoring my request to be included in the recall. They are not admitting any problems with the Intel boards.
The reason I am writing, is because I actually took some video before I lost 100% display functionality and I’d be happy to share it with you if interested.
Good Luck!
MCM
#6 by chris on September 21, 2008 - 8:36 am
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Send them over i will put them here. I am also about to try and send it to hp as well. What did they tell you? Broken screen? They tried that with me when i contacted them with their live chat. Let of know the story
#7 by chris on January 19, 2009 - 10:03 pm
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The happy end to this story that I forgot to mention at the time was that I asked HP to look at my laptop, they picked it up by courier and then dropped it off by courier too, they replaced the motherboard and whatever else they might have done free of charge, nothing to pay.
I might complain sometimes, especially about making hardware which shouldnt be defective from the get go, but at the least, they replaced it and everything was fine. A happy ending.
turned out it was the motherboard they replaced, I’ve got the document they left with the laptop here, if someone asks, I shall scan it so people can see.