[Mr M]

In the middle of a game (SPORE), cursor and screen got pixilated. Screen went black and I am unable to boot. I use a SONY VAIO laptop. AR-250G

SONY tech support had me F2, F9, F10 and all was fine for a few minutes, then same thing happened. The screen that asks me if I want SAFE mode or NORMAL keeps re-appearing.

Now SONY tells me I have to reinstall Windows XP.

I have an external hard drive I can use to back up, but I can't get Windows BU to work or GHOST to work.

BEST BUY tells me THEY can do a backup for $159 dollars (DOUBLE if you want it faster).

Do I want that? Can I do it myself?

Screen just got pinkish briefly just now; lower right of laptop gets VERY HOT at times.

What to do?

[Lance1]

Screen just got pinkish briefly just now; lower right of laptop gets VERY HOT at times.

Well thats not a good sign! Are the fans in good condition? Can you access safe mode? If you can, go into the device manager ( Windows key + pause break) go to the hardware tab then device manager. Click the (+) beside the display adapter and right click the display drivers and uninstall it. Restart the system. Post back and let us know.

[Mr M]

I CAN access SAFE mode which is how I'm working now.

I went to Device Manager via Control Panel to System. Window key +pause+break did not do anything.

If I uninstall the graphics card, how will I put it back? I only have recovery disks from SONY, NOT specific drivers.

[Mr M]

OK, I did it. I uninstalled the graphics card using device manager and was able to reboot. It took forever for my desktop icons to change from the default window to the real icon.

Then I crashed, got a blue screen and the system rebooted. Once again it took forever for icons to change.

The system re-installed the graphics card. Pixilation still exists. So it looks like the graphics card?

Technically I don't need to reinstall windows?

Can I just ask SONY to replace the graphics card? Or the Computer Geeks?

On a laptop, is it the whole motherboard that gets changed?

[Mr M]

Since I re-installed the graphics card, I am not seeing the problem. YET.

[Lance1]

Lets keep are fingers crossed on this Mr M! Glad it working so far.

[Mr M]

1. What was that windows key pause break?

2. If all works from this point on, was I looking at a corrupt graphics card driver? How?

[Mr M]

No luck. After about 4 hours of no problem, my cursor became pixilated, the screen went black and it happened again.

[Lance1]

Do you know someone with a card you can use to test your system and make sure it's the video card? This way we can narrow it down.

[Mr M]

Actually I don't. It's a laptop.

How labor intensive is it if I buy the parts and do it myself?

[Lance1]

I'm sorry. I forgot it’s a laptop. The video is part of the main board, and being that, you’d have to replace the main board to repair a hardware problem with the video.

[bbearren]

The graphics may not necessarily be buillt into the motherboard. My dell laptop has a separate nVidia graphics card, which I recently had to replace (my D800 is 6 years old). It depends on the model. My symptoms were quite similar to those you describe.

As for backing up, you can use BootIt Next Generation to make a drive image. It will run from a floppy disk and burn directly to CD's, DVD's, external hard drives. There is a fully functional 30-day free trial download, and the price if you want to buy it is under $40.