Noooooooooooooo my Acer 9810 seems to have died. What now?

Soldato
Joined
1 Mar 2007
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4,329
As topic really! I've had it a few years and its been fantastic and used a lot.

Its the 20.1" screen one that weighs a ton but has an amazing screen with brilliant viewing angles + really bright. I'm getting a lot of graphics botches (such as little red dots on the white cursor arrow but also more worryingly its as if the screen is turning on and off a lot on other earlier occasions but it NEVER does it until it enters windows) as soon as i get into windows which makes me think its the graphics card.

Theres 2 things i'm after help with really!

1) A vague diagnoses of what its likely to be, does everyone agree it sounds very much like the graphics card rather than the screen or whatever?
2) A little knowledge for a laptop noob like me as to how easy it is to just "upgrade" all the parts in a laptop such as the cpu/motherboard/graphics card if neccessary, as i'm really tempted to give the whole thing an overhaul.

I should mention that the specs are roughly some sort of early C2D@ 1.6ghz , 7600gt and 2gig basic ram.

Any help very much appreciated :D
 
Associate
Joined
2 Mar 2009
Posts
577
The graphics cards are usually the hardest to replace/upgrade I think.

You could try turning off all the graphically intensive effects such as aero or flip 3D (assuming you're using vista/7), not really a fix but it could help determine if the card is at fault.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
1 Mar 2007
Posts
4,329
Thanks for the reply, nah its using windows xp and i can't get into any settings at all. It effectively crashes upon booting up before i even get to the logon screen with lots of graphic faults.

When i think about it like that, ive been a bit thick to not immediately rule out screen problems :)
 
Associate
Joined
2 Mar 2009
Posts
577
I'm surprised at that, so its not just a case like with desktop pc's where you just slot a new one in?

Most laptop graphics are soldered to the motherboard, or the low/midrange ones at least, the 4570 in my studio is. However I think higher end cards like the 260M/HD4850 Mobile can be swapped out.
 
Soldato
Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
3,164
Its the famed nvidia graphics failure by the sounds of it its built onto the mainboard cannot be swapped out, will need replacing or can be fixed with a reflow of the gpu/memory, how long it lasts is a long shot really.

A quick search on the bay and a guy offers to repair them seems a fairly resonable rate too.
 
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