Think my laptop is dead, is it easy to replace a graphics card?

My old Dell laptop has developed a pretty serious fault. It boots up ok but just when it gets to the XP windows loading page the right side of the animated progress bar looks distorted/choppy and extra pixelated. Sort of like this:
http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/3936/xpfault.jpg

After this point the laptop makes a popping noise and the entire screen goes gray.

I've tried rebooting into Safe mode and it loads ok but the screen colours are horrible distorted, when you move the mouse, all the colors smudge and its almost impossible to see the icons.

I'm guessing its a fairly fatal hardware issue, can you replace graphics cards in a laptop or do you need to be a specialist to even think about opening one up.

Do you think its definitely the graphics card? All ideas welcome!

replacing the graphics card in a laptop is pretty much pointless after a certain point. If its no longer under warrenty you are looking at a 300-400 job plus tax and shipping.

Its the equivelent of paying someone to fix your ink jet printer. might as well just buy a new one.

Not too sure about laptops, but suspect graphics card will be integrated
on mother board..

Check device manager to see whats fitted.

You may be able to reload driver ...??

not at all up on this...

mave

Long time no see Spock. welcome back.

Cheers dude! Surprised anyone remembers me though.

I found a guy on ebay selling the exact graphics card for my dell, so might get it for like £5, cheaper than buying a new machine!

Stupid laptop, last night the damn thing worked, how does that make sense? I did some diagnostics thing in the boot menu, when it came to the graphics test it made lots of coloured bars that seemed to display fine, the only error it found was something on the hard-drive.

I've got the HD partioned into C and D, everytime it boots up it nags that drive D needs to be checked for errors or something, its always done that, I just skip it, but do you think some dodgy sector of HD could cause a major graphics type problem.

I dont know whether to buy this guy's card or what now, stupid machine. Gotta love computers...damn things!

hey SpockBert,

RE:

Quote:

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Surprised anyone remembers me though.

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Isn't your name carved on the lounge wall somewhere?

...about your problem, check your RAM as well, it might just be a faulty memory problem

...but a popping noise and then grey sounds like it could also possibly be a backlight problem.

If you can try to attach an external monitor you can check that easy enough. If it is your laptop screen, it should be fine on an external monitor.

Is your warranty over? If not, don't open it up, just contact Dell.

davidp