My Computer is nuts! HP Pavilion dv2500 CTO, vista

[Novah]

I have had this computer for a year now, and literally there days after the default warranty expired I have had nothing but trouble from it.

Random types of blue screens, shutdowns, reformats, factory default settings, virus scans, the works.

Most of the issues get ironed out magically over time for some reason that makes no sense to me.  I am a computer science major, I can fix everyone elses computer but mine it seems. The errors, and reasons are beyond myreasoning, and honestly baffle me.

I am lead to beleive that these problems are hardware related since recently when i tried to reformat, it took six or seven tries with the windows discs for it actually to format correctly.

After battling it for three days i get it up and running.  It bluescreens when it overheats (i have deduced this as the reason, but unfounded) The videocard randomly decides to restart itself sometimes causing my games to lose fullscreen and stop working (XXX game has stopped working dialogue).  

My network card works properly but sometimes decides to drop the signal randomly until i manually tell it to fix the problem, and then it works again (this problem has been mostly fixed, and blame is put on the router being aged)

Something is wrong with windows explorer too. It randomly stops working and reboots, killing most apps that are open.

Even firefox, firefox, my beloved firefox that would never turn its back on me, crashes all the time now for no reason (I am lead to beleive that it has soemthing to do with Adobe)

But most of all and the reason i come to the forums for help. What could be worse than random blue screens, a non booting computer, data loss, and unworking reformats? Let me tell you.

I was surfing the web about an hour ago, and my videocard decides to flicker again, and the screen goes black for a second and then comes back.

This time though it doesnt come back normal.

Ever messed with the alternate settings on setting a windows background? I am talking about windows XP for the moment, you can set the background/wallpaper to be "centered" or "tiled" or "stretched". Tile seems to look funny because usually you end up with 3 sets of the image, just like a tile.

back on point, now my laptop's screen looks like a tiled background. I have six start bars, six backgrounds, six instances of windows, six sets of whichever window i pop up, six sidebars, etc. Actually 6 and a half if you count the ones cut off on the bottom.  When i move the mouse all six move. Its literally like having 6 tiny monitors displaying the same thing. Only this is a laptop, i wasnt doing any system maintenance at the time, and the display settings regarding the six monitors are very blurry/bad resolution/bad color scheme.

Honestly guys i have no clue. I have shut ti down restarted it, pulled out the battery let it clear the volitle ram. I have no idea. I tried installing the driver which worked but didnt change a thing. 

Is it dead?  Can a motherboard be broken but still run the computer? Faulty ram? the computer runs fine the display is jsut not working???

I know i mentioned alot of issues but mainly the thing that is killing me is the fact that now the display is severely skewed.

What do i do!

thanks

[Rixander]

you have had it a little over the year

you never encounter any problem during all that time that may have some unusual trouble

out of the blue but u never sought that was very unusaul but never an any issue major until  now

 u should have had some odd issue from time to time

but any way did u get an extended warranty

would have been a slight headache to have it repaired or replace at your inconvenience

but that computer you order sound like a very serious defective one and how HP CTO Quality control let it passed

when some of their test should have caught something which sound like should not passed inspection or did they do any

tests and your computer sound it should have been a recall

and for some odd reason to my mind you may have a bad harddrive acting very unusual

and i would get replace to see if that is your problem which i doubt

but it is worth trying

but since you are a computer science major use your judgement

the worst is to replace the computer but i would reconsider ordering a CTO

and get it from the store

good luck

Message Edited by rickp400 on 12-11-2008 12:53 PM

[QuantumTarntino]

Novah, from my experience, that sounds like a failed video card.

Try booting into safe mode, and see if it is functioning.

The 6 screen effect you are seeing, if the video display, showing a resoluion the monitor cant display properly, indicating the video card is failing.

[johnd]

does your laptop have an AMD processor?

and navidia drivers?

[Mehdi]

I have the same problem(when I turn on my laptop I see 6 screens while booting) but my windows vista wont start up and it hangs. Somebody help me...

[Mehdi]

I found a clue!

turn on the laptop and press F10 to enter BIOS setup.

go to System Configuration menu

Enable the processor Virtualization Technology

select Exit > Exit Saving Changes

at the moment it is working and the 6 screens view is solved

but some times when i boot again, it shows again 6 screens but if you use CRTL+ALT+DEL the problem will be solved again!

[Novah]

I will have to try that in the bios, but i did find a clue in regards to mine, in the device manager it lists the Nvidia driver with an exclamation point next to it. meaning that the driver has failed. I investigated and it said that the driver wasnt loaded, or the card wasnt loaded to prevent malfunctioning, error code 42 maybe?

I resinstalled drivers from the web for the display adapter adn the nvidia drivers to no avail.  Is my screen dead?

[Mehdi]

My device manager lists the Nvidia driver with no exclamation point. I am trying to setup the driver updates from website but the computer stops suddenly and restarts and again I see 6screens but when I reboot system several times sometimes it starts normally! I updated the BIOS from web but still the problem is remaining.

[Mehdi]

At last I concluded that it is because of video card. Nvidia chip has burnt because of overheating. this laptop has overheating problem

[SRG]

I have got a HP Pavilion DV2580 which is a couple of months outside the one year warranty, that started to go nuts on me and became very hot.

Suddenly the display started to show different colors and figures before the computer restarted.

Since then I only come to see a distorted display showing something like a 256k resolution compressed and distorted in to two rows of 3,5 screens per row.

I have read several posts on the internet, from people writing about similar problems with overheating issues and toasting the GeForce 8400M GS card. So it seems quite a common thing.

Now what is HP thinking about it... nothing it seems from my phone call to their customer service. To me it clearly sounds like a manufacuring fault.

Other older DV2500 models which had a related issue all got repaired FOC, even though the one year warranty had expired.

So what should/could be the action for me to take, can anyone please suggest something.

Thanks in advance!