Help My laptop is stuck on a blackscreen!

[CaseyKuzniewski]

I recently installed fedora 10 on my laptop 2.4ghz dual nvidia 7900 gpus
at first the install worked then the graphics become corrupted and then
I tried some help from the forum to fix this edited the command file to add
3 or 5 at the end which didn't help the graphics, and then today i just get a blank screen
when i start up the computer no splash screen or anything and i cant get into system bios!

[joe.pelayo]

Isn't your card one of the ones affected by this:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...ad-bumps-worse

Thanks.
Joe.

[CaseyKuzniewski]

No it's an older Alienware machine here are some stats I found


Invoice | 285178

1 |
AURORA M9700

1 |
AURORA-M 9700 17" WUXGA W/ CAM

1 |
AURORA-M 9700 ACCESSORY SET REV 1

1 |
TURION 64 35 WATT ML-44

2 |
PDP 1GB DDR PC3200 SODIMM AW90

1 |
SEAGATE 80GB 7200RPM SATA NCQ

1 |
8X DVD+/-RW NEC AD-5540A REV 1

2 |
9700 NVIDIA 7900 GS WITH 512MB

1 |
9700 802.11 B/G MINI PCI WIRELESS CARD

1 |
MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP HOME COA

1 |
CYBERLINK POWERDVD 6.0

1 |
ALIENWARE DIGITAL DOWNLOAD STORE

1 |
ALIENGUISE XENOMORPH

1 |
OWNER IDENTIFICATION CARD

1 |
NVIDIA SLI TECHNOLOGY CONFIGURATION

1 |
1-YR 24/7 WARRANTY (NO CHARGE)

1 |
ON-SITE WARRANTY

1 |
PERIPHERALS

1 |
WINDOWS XP HOME AMD VERSION 6041

1 |
NERO EXPRESS DVD WITH VISION EXPRESS SFT BUNDLE V6.0.0.16C

1 |
ALIENWARE MOBILE BINDER 9700A

[CaseyKuzniewski]

The laptop had a 15min shutdown problem I had repaired by attaching thermal
paste onto the gpu and while it started fedora 10 the graphics were corrupted
until about 2 days ago it just started with a black screen no system splash or anything!

[joe.pelayo]

Sorry, I couldn't tell from your post, is Fedora the only OS affected by this problem? Or is it the only OS you can check?

Assuming it occurs in the whole machine is still seems to me as a GPU failure. I know it is not the same laptop but if you read the symptoms for defective HP laptops here http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...1087277&dlc=en perhaps you'll find a similarity there. And that was extracted from here http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...1087277&dlc=en (it might not be one of the affected gpus but your laptop's gpu could have gone south as well for a different reason).

Just to cover all the basics, have you checked the laptop has proper ventilation (check the CPU side).

Thanks.
Joe.

[CaseyKuzniewski]

I called alienware and they said it sounded like a bad video card, so I
removed both cards and put the secondary in the primary and restarted
the os loaded fine no video corruption at all!

[joe.pelayo]

Originally Posted by CaseyKuzniewski

I called alienware and they said it sounded like a bad video card, so I
removed both cards and put the secondary in the primary and restarted
the os loaded fine no video corruption at all!

Good to know it works now

BTW, that sounds like a really cool laptop (one in which you can change GPU's at will).

Thanks.
Joe.