Issues with Display on Boot - Octane III (Clevo P751DM2-G)

[SpartanShan]

I am having some very strange issues with my laptop. About 90% of the time when I turn it on the screen (including any external screens) fail to start. This begun about a week ago and has progressively got worse ie when it started the screen would start 25% of the time. I can however tell that the laptop is fully booting as the hard drive light flashes as expected and the fans make do the usual bootup spinning noises.

I just took the bottom of the case off and both the PCI-e connection on the graphics card and power connector seem to be plugged in fine. I also noticed here that on the ocassions the screen did not display anything the graphics card fan would turn off within 5/10 seconds of booting which on the ocassion the screen did display on boot did not happen. This to me all seems to suggest an issue with the graphics card, but I can't tell if it's likely the graphics card is failing or any of the connections are. The laptop has not been dropped/damaged at all and I can not think of anything that could have caused this from my use of it. Furthermore, on the ocassions the screens do boot successfully I then have no issues until I reboot the laptop even when running demanding tasks like gaming.

Just as an aside point there was actually one ocassion where it booted and the external screen worked but not the built in screen, which was very odd judging by the rest of the symptons.

I would send it back for repair (as it's still under labour warranty) but I have several very important deadlines coming up that I absolutely cannot be without my laptop for.

Does anyone have any suggestions of what the issue could or advice on further troubleshooting steps I could take?

 

[Oussebon]

Have you tried removing the GPU drivers with DDU http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

And then performing a clean install of the latest Nvidia drivers from the geforce website?

There was an issue patched in a recent update where some mobile GPUs would fail to start properly - but I don't know if that's your issue or not.

 

[ubuysa]

The problems began 'about a week ago', so what happened about a week ago? Did you do any Windows updates? If you did back out all those updates that were done about a week ago (or more recently) and see whether the problem remains. Did you update any drivers about a week ago? Did you update any software about a week ago?

It is possible that the GPU (or some other hardware) has randomly failed, but it's much more likely that something changed 'about a week ago' and if you can find out what that was you'll be on course to fix the issue.

 

[SpartanShan]

Have you tried removing the GPU drivers with DDU http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

And then performing a clean install of the latest Nvidia drivers from the geforce website?

There was an issue patched in a recent update where some mobile GPUs would fail to start properly - but I don't know if that's your issue or not.

Thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately this does not seem to have worked.

The problems began 'about a week ago', so what happened about a week ago? Did you do any Windows updates? If you did back out all those updates that were done about a week ago (or more recently) and see whether the problem remains. Did you update any drivers about a week ago? Did you update any software about a week ago?

It is possible that the GPU (or some other hardware) has randomly failed, but it's much more likely that something changed 'about a week ago' and if you can find out what that was you'll be on course to fix the issue.

Thank you for the suggestion, I will look for any recent updates made in that time. I am wondering though if this could even be OS related given that the display fails to show anything when booting and the graphics card fan turns off (suggesting the card isn't booting at all? In fact I tried going into the BIOS just then (with the F2 key?) and the display still didn't show anything, does this rule out a software problem?

Last night after I got the laptop to start it was able to restart fine and in fact, even after being turned off for a couple of minutes I was able to turn it back on with no issues, it was only this morning when I tried to turn it on that the issue arose again. After more research it unfortunately seems like to me that a capacitor has blown, either on a part powering the graphics card or on the graphics card itself. Does this diagnosis seem correct? If so is there any information out there about the capacitors in this machine? Or anywhere I can buy replacement parts? The final important question is, is it still safe to use the laptop or am I likely to damage it further?

 

[SpartanShan]

Bumping, hoping someone will have a magic solution!

The number of times it takes to turn on now seems to stablished at roughly 10. Then it can be restarted/turned off an on without issue providng it's not left off for more than a matter of minutes. So I would suggest it certainly seems like a power issue of some sort but beyond that I'm lost.

 

[ubuysa]

Thank you for the suggestion, I will look for any recent updates made in that time. I am wondering though if this could even be OS related given that the display fails to show anything when booting and the graphics card fan turns off (suggesting the card isn't booting at all? In fact I tried going into the BIOS just then (with the F2 key?) and the display still didn't show anything, does this rule out a software problem?

If you can't access the BIOS setup (via F2 or Del) then it's not an OS problem. I think it's time to call PCS and prepare for an RMA.

 

[Scott]

Sounds like faulty RAM to me. Do you have multiple RAM modules? I would suggest taking one out and trying it. If it persists, swap it with one of the others and see if it persists. If that fails then RMA as it's then onto processor/motherboard/GPU issues.