Laptop problem - screen or graphics card

[willsium]

Hello there, my sister has a problem with her laptop that I'm having trouble getting my head around. She told me last week that the screen on her laptop had started going black unexpectedly, not having the thing with me I thought maybe it was just going into standby but she says it goes black randomly, sometimes whilst in use. I then thought it may be a screen problem (backlight etc) as she then told me that when it went black she could still see the display if she looked at it in good light. This screamed backlight problem until I got here to plug it into an external monitor and the same thing happened.

Since I last spoke to her the problem seems to have gotten worse, she says the screen flickers on and off, sometimes staying on sometimes not. It used to come back on by pressing the power button but this no longer works either.

I'm a bit stuck as to whether its screen or graphics card related now, any ideas anyone? The laptop is an hp pavilion dv6552ea.

[Huffer]

You can tell screen problems from graphics card problems by hooking the computer to an external monitor. If the problem is the same on an external monitor, then the problem is the video card. If not, it is the screen. Since the problem shows up on the external monitor it is the video card which is par for the course on that series of models with AMD CPU and nVidia graphics.

[willsium]

Thanks Huffer, are there any possible cures for this? I have read up on the series a bit and it seems that many report black screens as a result of the graphics card overheating. I thought however that the laptop would keep shutting down if excessive temperatures were reached in the GPU? There has been a possible solution to this problem, which is to resolder the gpu in place and also add a better heatsink with paste.

[Huffer]

I have seen very promising reports on adding copper shims or even a copper penny between the graphics chip and the heatsink pipe. Since that costs very little and just might fix the problem or postpone it for many months it is worth a try. Next time I am given one of these to fix I plan on trying that. If you need the manual let me know but if you get in there and see how it is put together you will immediately notice the only cooling device on the video chip is a soft pad that puts no downward pressure on the chip.

[willsium]

Yes I've seen a few guides dealing with that fix, there is a video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnkQNmKauEc&feature=player_embedded

A guy gives a fairly detailed method on resoldering the chip and replacing it with a copper shim which seems to to work, however heating the chip to the right temperature seems to be a bit tricky without the proper tools. I still can't see why if it was heat related that there wouldn't be more shutdowns crashes etc due to the overheating?

[Huffer]

It is not even a matter of replacing the chip with the shim. I have heard that it works if you just add the shim without even reflowing the chip underneath, just by applying downward pressure to the chip. I agree reflowing looks very tricky but just adding the shim or shims should not be too hard excapt that series is one of the more difficult ones to take apart.

[willsium]

hmm interesting, I shall do a bit more research and then give it a go as just putting the shim in wouldn't be too hard, although I agree taking that series apart is no fun at all.

[Worm12316]

I kina have the same problemo but its the drivers or graphics card becuse My pc was windows 8 but then formatted the drive and installed windows 7 ultimate and the aero is basic and so rated the pc and the graphics were both at 1.0

[Worm12316]

Does anybody know if i can install beats audio on my hp pavilion a1400y