Laptop issues - driver? hardware?

[applepie]

same prob as last time, my display doesnt work sometimes or goes to a very low resolution and crappy colours with an error msg saying that the ATI graphics driver is knackered.

then points me to a MS support page.

I have a radeon mobility 9200, however, there are no updated drivers nor is there a relevant support page on the ATI webpage. my driver is the 2004 version which is the latest one that I could find via google.

I had a look through the manufacturer (sony) for updated drivers as well and nothing there as well.

well it works fine occasionally or just needs alot of reboots to get it working. so i am not sure if its a hardware or software prob, asked last time and was mentioned that it could be due to some connection thingy somewhere or a knackered power something.

cant be arsed to spend the 150GBP odd i was quoted to get it looked at and repaired. the final cost may be higher.

so if its just a driver thingy, would be ace to just fix it, if not will live with it till i can afford a sexy intel macbook

[Smiling Dragon]

The rule of thumb with faults like that would point towards it being hardware, if a reboot doesn't fix it, then the next one does and you aren't doing anything in between it probably isn't software (unless it's _extremely_ buggy software).

I would guess you've got some static damage somewhere. If a few tracks are partially ablated by wear and tear or a static charge, you'd get different behaviour based on the temperature and humidity in the atmosphere. As the laptop warms up the behaviour could change too.

Probably the video chip itself but it also could be the bus or RAM doing that.

I assume the same problem occures if you plug in an external screen and keep the laptop screen switched off?

[applepie]

duh forgot, it works perfectly in the external screen so it must be a hardware issue.

googling turns up either the backlight or the inverter is bust. just have to find the parts and attempt to replace them

not paying the 150GBP + parts I was quoted, thats the cheaper 3rd party ones.

Sony quoted a grand total of 450++ !

[TDonald]

I'm sorry to say that in my (semi-professional) experience, an intermittent display fault on a laptop is a knackered graphics card or motherboard. If it was a driver/software problem, it would almost certainly occur all the time.

£150 isn't bad if they can fix it. You just have to decided if you'd rather do that or use an external display all the time.