VGC-V2M corrupted display at startup

[docphil444]

Hello!

I own a desktop Vaio VGC-V2M which ran smoothtly since 2004.

Since a couple of months, the screen display started to get corrupted, displaying

artefacts ands bugs randomly: sometimes as soon as the Vaio boots, sometimes after

several minutes, sometimes it just ran smoothly. But, as time go by, the problem

occurs more and more ofently, and now windows will just hang on at startup with many

weird bugs (like glitches and offsets) on the screen.

This happens not only under windows , but even at the Viao boot splash screen,
and even under Ultimate BOot CD. So I believe this is really hardware related and not

driver related.

It seems that video memory got corrupted, exactly like when a video car is too much

overclocked. Obviously, no need to say that mine has *NEVER* been overcloked.

I UNDERclocked the geforce 5700go under windows with no luck.

Wondering if the problem was over-heating related, I checked the 2 rear fans and

they're OK. I also checked that the Vaio is not dusty inside.

Does some one would have some trick to suggest ? I'm not afraid using a solder iron,

I've been able to fix a hardware defect on another laptop (not a Sony 😮 )


By the way, this thread is very related to my issue, and describes exactly what

happens, but in other words. So I believe that some VGC-V2M model could be

defective....
http://www.club-vaio.com/clubvaio/mvnforum/viewthread?thread=34598



I've Memtest'ed the ram OK, and I have no (afaik) other video output to display to another screen.


Any suggestion welcome 🙂

Thank you.
docphil

[docphil444]

Well, still investigating on this ....

It appears that changing clock values with coolbits.reg make things much better. The Vaio runs for several hours without hanging nor artifacting, but....

But the issue there is that these new values are loaded at windows startup. So the go5700 just boots with its default initial (and crashy) clock frequencies.... And from times to times, the artifact issue just appears from the splash screen. This causes windows (in fact : the driver) to restore frequencies at their initial values, since windows 'sees' there a problem and just think 'okay, this guy modded the frequencies, I guess he has tried to overclock, so now I restore values to prevent failures'.

But this windows behaviour is not what I want.
So the only solution is to mod the fx go5700 bios, , in order lo lower initial frequency values.
This is an issue since rivatuner, nvflash, atitools and other famous softwares just fail in dumping the bios. This 5700 go is very special since it has 128 MB ram and his DEV_ID is 0347, instead of the well known 0348.

So the updated request is : Looking deperately for a 0347 BIOS , or, I take my chances on it, a 0348 BIOS, hoping I won't kill my motherboard. Well, I have no other choice anyway.... The Viao is unusable as is.

Thank you for reading this.
Doc.