Bad GPU? Freezing, black screen, and graphic artifacts.

Hello.

Recently my hp pavilion dm4 with switchable radeon 5000 series gpu has started acting funny.

It started months ago with poor performance in streaming videos online when the radeon was activated (dubbed "hi performance" in the OS.) This problem seemed to get better after reinstalling Windows back in March or April and using canned air to clean the innards of dust.

However, about a week ago while playing a game, the screen froze up and the computer rebooted. Upon restart, I got a message saying the video driver had crashed and was incompatible with the catalyst control center (not exactly sure what that is, but I installed several different driver versions to no avail.)
The computer continues crashing in this way, and often will show bars or a checker pattern on the screen before freezing. To make matters worse, a good percentage of the time, the screen will remain black upon startup. I've tried reinstalling the OS, and thankfully was able to boot in safe mode and back up all of the files I needed. I'm tempted to rule out malware as a cause due to the fact that the problem persists after reinstalling Windows.

I have used canned air to blow out all the fans, and have kept up with that habit pretty well since I started experiencing the slowness in video playback. I have not noticed any extreme overheating since I amended the initial problem earlier this year.

I'm ready to spend a small amount on fixing this, but I'm also pretty ready to upgrade to a MacBook Pro or iMac since I have started using Photoshop and a drawing tablet to illustrate digitally. I wanted to get a good background knowledge on what to expect before I bring it in to get an official diagnosis. Any input is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jake

TVeblen said:

Since you have done a (clean?) install of W7, that eliminates a lot of common problems. You can certainly stop thinking about viruses.

I have a couple of questions:

• Where did you get the video driver(s) for the laptop when you did the reinstall? From the HP website only, or did you use the driver package from ATI? In the early days of dual graphics, the driver package was for both graphics chips and available only from the laptop manufacturer. Using the package from ATI would cause problems.
• What happens if you disable the Hi-Performance graphics (in Device Manager)? Yes, your video performance will drop, but does that make the artifacts and freezing stop? This test is to try and isolate the problem graphics chip.
• Does this behavior happen only on battery, or when the battery and power supply are both connected? What happens if you run on the power supply only and remove the battery completely?

1.) I did get the drivers from ATI prior to reinstalling 7.
3.)The problem exists regardless of whether the laptop is plugged in.

I started with step 2 with some success so far. When I booted in safe mode to attempt to disable the hi performance graphics, the device manager implied that there were indeed problems with the ATI Chip. So far so good, although it's only been about 30 minutes since I disabled it.

Faladu, sorry for the lack of specificity. When I posted the thread I was not around my laptop so I wasn't sure on its exact model number and specs. It's a dm4 1200 series, running a Radeon 6370, an i5 processor and 4 GB Ram. Not sure if its HD or not, since that chip is now disabled it doesn't show up when i run dxdiag.

My last question is whether or not it's possible to enable the ATI card after disabling it? It no longer shows up under device manager and I want to make sure that it's still accessible if it turns out to not be the problem.

Some new developments lead me to be almost certain that my problem lies with the ATI graphics chip.

I wanted to try to install an updated driver as you said in step 2 (since my PC was currently running the original drivers from the out-of-box state I thought trying a NEW version may help) This seemed to throw a wrench in all the smoothness I had attained earlier. After restarting for the driver update the screen was just black (the usual symptom) and even when I would disable the ATI gpu the symptoms persisted. I did a system restore back to earlier this morning before updating the driver.

It seems like it's finally back to how I had it before, but it seems like my laptop just doesn't like not having that dang ATI chip disabled. Every time I restart and check my device management control panel, the thing has been enabled automatically. When I tried to uninstall the device, the system just reinstalled it on its own, which IMMEDIATELY started bugging out my system again.

I'm content to just run the laptop indefinitely with just the integrated graphics. That should hold me over until I can just replace the machine with something new, I just need to shut down the discrete graphics for good, since that is clearly the problem in my eyes.

Thanks for the help so far. Seems we're getting closer to that.