The Nvidia Defect Forum

As of Sunday morning my 2 and half year laptop complained of a hardware failure on boot up followed by a ghostly display failure. Yet I can still see it on the LAN and have since been backing everything up from the shared drives. On Monday normal business seemed to resume followed an hour or so later by misterious reboot until we are now back at the ghostly scree stage. Windows is still powering up and I can acces the shared folders, etc.

We got it as an insurance replacement to an earlier ACER laptop that got totalled by a kid upending my wifes tea into it.

Where would we stand with this?

Hello Sanders and welcome to our forum.

Sorry to hear of the problems you have been experiencing with your laptop.



Well, the insurance company are responsible for sorting this situation out, though you have no protection with the Sale Of Goods Act.

You should contact the Insurance company and tell them that the laptop they supplied you with is inherently defective and that you want a replacement.

I would also tell them that this is a worldwide problem affecting many different manufacturers and models of laptop.

Was your laptop running hot prior to the failure?

It is a tricky one as you are not covered by the Sale Of Goods Act but if you persist and tell the insurance company that unless they comply then you intend taking legal action, then you may just get a resolution without having to take it further.

This is one of those instances though where you will need to take some legal advice to see what action, if any, you can take.

I am sorry I cannot advise more specifically but I am sure we will be able to help you with advice etc.

If you have any questions then please let me know.

Please keep us updated on your progress.

Good luck and best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

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Please note that I am not legally qualified and I only offer my own personal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice for formal clarification of advice I give.

Unfortunately I can't rule out kids doing something to the laptop -say a leaking drinker bottle- It has been spending the summer streaming BBC CBeebies live iplayer at them. In that sense it has worked harder than most desktops for most of the year. I don't know if it was getting hotter than it was as it was permamently set up on a shelf.

Tell me this! The mother board is fine otherwise as I can still operate it over the my home LAN and have accessed the drives to backup the data. The graphics came back to life once for an hour or so! The intermittancy suggest dry joints related to heat

Some technological thoughts?
1) If I can get remote operating software onto it I can run it over my LAN and use it as a media and printer server. Does anyone know any software that could be installed blind?

2) Would a universal laptop USB docking station give me a route by providing an alternative VGA output?

3) Would anyone take seriously re-balling the graphics chip? that is send it off to have the graphics chip removed and resoldered?

4) Would a new motherboard be advisable or would that be just spending money to buy a ticking time bomb

Hello Sanders,



Why not connect to your TV or another monitor the the DSUB connector (the monitor port)?

That way you will be able to set the laptop up to act as a media server more easily.

Though I do have to say that if your laptop is reaching high temps then the laptop will probably not last for long before it fails completely. It may last longer if you don't turn it off!



Some companies do offer this service, though to be honest it is hit and miss as to how long the fix will last.
Due to the GPU in question I would advise against this.



Well, seeing as the defective GPU's exist in laptops and their spare parts then the chances are that the replacement mainboard will be as defective as the board it is replacing so again, I would advise against this.

Even some of the retailers are recognising the fact that repairs simply do not work and have given up offering repairs.

I hope the above answers your questions.

If you have any further questions then please let me know.

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

_________________
=======================================================
Calculate the minimum refund that you would be entitled to.
FAQ's
Why you should not accept a repair
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What is the Nvidia Defect?
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Do you need an engineers report?
=======================================================

If you like what you see on this forum and would like to help then please post links to this forum in other forums or blogs. The more people we can help the better.


Please note that I am not legally qualified and I only offer my own personal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice for formal clarification of advice I give.

Unless I am missing something the vga monitor port on my laptop is deader that the screen. Even after trying to toggle display with FN F5

I've noticed in town people selling fan assisted cooling pads for laptops. I guess these are must have if you are going to use a laptop in a mostly static location?

Hello Sanders,

Well, if you cannot display to the LCD panel or to an external monitor then I would say that the chances are increasing of your laptop being inherently defective.

Regarding the cooling pad, well they do help keep the temps down, but I have an issue with having to use one of these as I think that the laptop should be able to cope with the dissipation of the heat unaided.

What really annoys me is the way that manufacturers design these laptops. Why do they design them in such a way that the fan and heat sink assembly is totally inaccessible to the end user?

Surely that manufacturers have wised up to the fact that fans and assemblies get blocked and need cleaning. Failure to clean can cause overheating and, in certain circumstances, failure of the laptop.

Why don't they design them in such a way that would allow the end user to remove a panel on the underside of the laptop and then simply clean the fan and aperture?

It would save a lot of grief for a lot of customers.

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

_________________
=======================================================
Calculate the minimum refund that you would be entitled to.
FAQ's
Why you should not accept a repair
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What is the Nvidia Defect?
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Do you need an engineers report?
=======================================================

If you like what you see on this forum and would like to help then please post links to this forum in other forums or blogs. The more people we can help the better.


Please note that I am not legally qualified and I only offer my own personal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice for formal clarification of advice I give.

Overall I am begining to see that the laptop as big fudged design compromise to obtain portability (and fashionability). I think for the mid-term I shall prioritise full case desktops for longevity, maintainability and ungradeability.

re: the graphics outputs I would have thought if the graphics chip has gone down then it would take out the VGA and HDMI outputs as well as the onboard display. Be interesting if people have other experience.

Hello Sanders,



Well, sometimes when the GPU fails only the LCD fails. The VGA and HDMI ports can sometimes continue to work but the laptop does tend to fail completely shortly after.

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

_________________
=======================================================
Calculate the minimum refund that you would be entitled to.
FAQ's
Why you should not accept a repair
Links to evidence
What is the Nvidia Defect?
Step by step help to getting a refund
Do you need an engineers report?
=======================================================

If you like what you see on this forum and would like to help then please post links to this forum in other forums or blogs. The more people we can help the better.


Please note that I am not legally qualified and I only offer my own personal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice for formal clarification of advice I give.