Thinkpad T61, Odd video and random crashes

[crmaykish]

I have had a Thinkpad T61 (Geforce card) for almost a year now with very little trouble. It was running Vista the entire time. A few days ago, I was playing a game when the screen stuttered. Everything became pixelated and there were strange lines. I rebooted and everything was fine. However, recently it has been crashing very often in Windows and when I go to restart it, the BIOS image doesn't appear and the screen is filled with strange symbols and illegible text. I can usually manage to work my way into Windows anyway, but the screen is stretched and doubled.

It takes several restarts and some messing with an external monitor to get it back to normal.

Today I formatted the machine and installed Windows XP thinking it might be Vista. However, I believe it has to be hardware since it is effecting the machine immediately after boot.

Any advice would be appreciated.

EDIT: Once when it crashed I managed to see an error about the video driver failing and then the screen went blank. This was when the machine still had Vista.

[Mak213]

Moved to laptop area to see if they have any advice.

It seems that the laptop could be overheated. It could also be the LCD or the ribbon to the LCD.

Cheers,
Mak

[CalcProgrammer1]

Sounds overheated to me, if it gets really hot (laptops do this when playing games), bad things can happen, and the graphics cards on laptops are VERY inadequately cooled. I use my laptop for games, but I always have an external fan and cooling pad in use when doing so. Without them, my 8600M GS reaches 95 degrees C (over 200 F, near boiling point of water) when playing games. I'd recommend taking some desktop case fans and blowing them into your laptop's intake vent, anything to help get the heat off the case will improve cooling.

However, you may have already crossed that point and damaged your hardware. First check RAM, as that can easily be replaced, but if it still has issues, you could have damaged your CPU or GPU.

[crmaykish]

Thanks for the reply. I'm thinking it's completely damaged at this point. I will no longer boot at all without garbled text. Fortunately it is my school laptop and should be under warranty. I was just hoping to get it fixed without having to go through them.

[KurrentEweser]

Originally Posted by crmaykish

Thanks for the reply. I'm thinking it's completely damaged at this point. I will no longer boot at all without garbled text. Fortunately it is my school laptop and should be under warranty. I was just hoping to get it fixed without having to go through them.

In the future shoot some canned air though the air vents once a month to keep the fan and heatsink free of dust.

[crmaykish]

Will do. Thanks for the help, guys. Now I just need to get it back to the tech center for a replacement.