anyone have a toshiba 5105 'spare' geforce4 440 video card? - Page 2

i just took a few flights with my 5105 in a 'roll-aboard' case, so it got a fair bit of vibration going thru the airports. It crashed A LOT during the first day or 2 after that. Now it's stabilised a bit to where it doesn't crash too often, same as before. Sounds to me like a loose/flaky connection.
jeff

My Toshiba Sattelite 5105-607 Just started today having video problems. What a shame, I love the laptop. I can not change the video settings from VGASave 4bit mode and have flickering screen with bars running verticle through it. It will not change the video drivers. I can install them and see the video card in the device manager but cannot see the video card when you go to the display properties. What gives? I have had this laptop for about 3 1/2 years now and it still is fast and sufficient for my needs. Any resolution out there? Your help is greatly appreciated!

I have read all the posts here and I believe I have the same problem. My fan (a brand new fan) also doesn't start very often (almost never), but I don't think that the fan is the problem. When I start the machine cold and run a program to force the fan to run all the time, the video still gets flakey after a while and finally the machine crashes. I have pulled the machine apart and replaced the thermal grease under the heat sinks and the machine seems to run a couple of degrees cooler. I can see signs of overheating at some point in the past. The plastic case right over the video card is discolored, as if the plastic softened. Right over that point, the keyboard back is also discolored. When the machine is running and the keyboard is loose, I can change the garbage on the screen by running a finger over the case right above the video card. My theory is that the machine runs fairly hot normally and the video board got hot and got a very small crack in one of the traces. I would like to find a cheap, broken machine where somebody dropped the machine and broke the LCD, but that will be hard to find.

Same problem - Here's my theory

Hi,

I'm having the same problem with my 5105-s607, almost 3 years old, problem started quite suddenly lately.

I noticed that there was a loose screw just below the video card, and I tightened it. This made a big difference for a few days, in that it would not get screwed up until about an hour after the computer started up. This rapidly deteriorated again. I actually noticed that when the fan started, then it was more likely to happen. This made me think of a heat problem, and I had certainly noticed that the video connector would be red hot.

I then downloaded the fan utility, and found that running the fan continuously would not have an impact. Iw actually started happening sooner.

I disassembled the laptop, cleaned all the connectors, replaced the thermal grease on the heatsink, but to no avail.

I had felt that since the problem occured at the same time as the loose screw, that it was probably a problem with the video-mainboard connector. I then stuck a couple of small bits of rubber onto the video card, just above the connector to apply a little more pressure to the connector, so that it would create a better contact. This was even worse, causing the corruption as soon as windows had loaded (at the point where the mouse pointer first appeared).

I'm beginning to think that it's definitely a problem with the video card. It seems that the slightest dusruption to the card (touching the keyboard, loose screw, the fan starting etc) causes the failure. I have been unable to find a replacement part, and many of the suppliers say that the part is not available. This suggests to me that Toshiba have had to replace a lot of these, and have run out of supply. The other possibility is that a fault on the motherboard, such as the video connector could be the problem. I think the only way to prove this would be to change the video card, and see if that fixed the problem.

Has anyone had any recent success fixing the problem?

nmndias,

Were did that tech say to put the ring? What thickness of ring did he suggest?

Ro

Try an external keyboard and mouse, so the top is not being touched. I really think that the video card gets a tiny crack, where a trace makes intermittant contact. I think the only solution is a new video card,

One of our employees here seems to have a similar issue.
He has a 5100 with the Geforce 440, and has been getting corruption on his screen as well. This corruption does not seem to be affected by moving the laptop or pressing a key anywhere, but the resolution. at 800x600 and 640x480 there are large vertical bars everywhere, whether in DOS or windowsXP.
If we bump the resolution to 1024x768 it all seems fine.

That is until today, even at 1024 he was getting corruption, this time thin vertical bars. I reset his resolution down to 800x600 and back up, which corrected the issue for a while, but then it started getting corrupt again.

We've reinstalled windows to no effect, and know its not a windows driver issue anyway as it will do it even in BIOS or while the laptop is booting.

check this out
http://www.toshibadirect.com/content/pc/b2c/CEP.html
maybe we can get them to do a similar deal for us....

does anyone know how?

j

I also have a 5105-S607 that exhibits the verticle line video problem discussed in the forum. The laptopworks for about 15-30 minutes befoe the video freezes and evidently crashes. Wiggling screen also seems to cause the video problem. I called a local reair shop aand they tried to locate another video card without success. The authorized repair shop in Denver said to bring it in and for $80 they will diagnose problem and for another $150 labor plus $250-300 to replace card. If I could locate the card I think I could replace it myself...but getting another card is apparently impossible.

Yet another

I have two-and-a-half-year-old 5105-S607, purchased in the US, that is exhibiting the same behaviour you describe.

I run Linux 2.6 with up-to-date NVidia drivers but rebooting into Windows XP doesn't make any difference. I have a script that checks the CPU temperature every couple of minutes and kicks the fan on at anything even slightly warm, so I'm almost certain I haven't cooked my graphics card.

The symptoms include:

* Initially could not run glquake 1 any more; 3-d screensavers all run terribly slowly, indicative of software rendering rather than hardware accelerated as usual. Rebooting to XP showed that 3-d screensavers all generated screen corruption.

* System will hang after around two minutes running with screen resolution of 1600x1200, consistently. Sometimes this results in a grey screen, sometimes just a corruption of whatever happened to be there.

* Sometimes speckles of around six or seven pixels appear randomly over the screen during boot when warm, and system will hang shortly afterwards

* Switching screen resolution down to 1024x768 seems to keep it up longer (I'm typing this on it now).

* Flexing the keyboard causes screen corruption and then failure.

Everything else about the machine is fantastic. I'd very much like to be able to repair it. Unfortunately I'm beyond my warranty, so I suspect this will be expensive. I'd like to hear from anyone having any luck with swapping the graphics card, or anyone in the UK with experience of returning such a machine to a repair centre.

Has anyone used a high-powered magnifier on the connector - either on the video card or the motherboard. I don't have access to my Toshiba right now but I wonder if it's a matter of bad soldering or tiny cracks in the circuit board tracks. I used to use an SLR 35 mm camera lens (looking through it backwards) to spot cracks in circuit board runs or bad solder joints.

-Mark

I'm here to join this unfortunate club.

My 5105-s701, bought about two and a half years ago, started exhibiting the display corruption pathology described in this thread about two weeks ago. I had dual boot XP/Mandrake, both worked. Then I noticed system freezes due to display corruption, I installed XP2003 with Toshiba drivers, things worked okay for about a week. Then starting last week, this problem re-occured with increasing frequency (everytime I shut down now its because of this problem) and ferocity (at times even the slightest keystroke can corrupt the display).

Sometimes the OS would just freeze. At other times, the bluescreen comes up and the physical memory is dumped before shutting down.

I'm not a gamer at all, and I haven't notice any correlation with heat so I really don't think this problem has to do much with the fan. I thought it might be the latest nvidia drivers I had installed, I played around with a couple, including the original one supplied with the machine, the problem still persists. This problem is also independent of the OS. And at times occurs even at the time of bootup.

The nature of the problem seems to be more mechanical in my case as well. Moving the laptop around, changing the screen angle, typing, or especially dragging windows seems to trigger the corruption. Naively, I felt that if I were to somehow pop out the casing and tighten the flat cables between the screen and the mobo, things should improve, but based on some of the posts here that might not solve this problem.

I wonder if this is a sign that some of our lcd screens are about to die? Is that what we should be looking at? Instead of fans or replacings the gpu?

Let's keep this post alive.

Vij

PS: By the way, is anyone having problems with their power connector where the adapter pin plugs in? Mine dies every once in a while, leaving me with just the battery until I move the cable around into a conformation which makes Satellite happy.

My problem was clearly the graphics card. There seemed to be a hairline crack that was affected by heat or touching the machine above the card, such as the keyboard or the touchpad. I was able to find a replacement video card which fixed the problem. Please note that the S702, S702 and S901 units use a 64MB card and the other 5105 models use a 32MB card. I believe that you must use the card with the correct amount of video memory. You should note that both the 32MB and 64MB cards use assembly number FMC2G1.

no, but my firewire plug is getting more and more flimsy...

jeff

Hi Rich,

I read your previous post, seems like you're right about the graphics card. I can understand how the typing would perturb a cracked video card, but it still puzzles me as to how using the touchpad (in my case) and angling the screen creates enough of a localized disturbance on the video card.

I'm happy that your display is back to working. Could you share with us how you went about procuring and installing the 64mb card?

And perhaps to anyone here who's opened up the machine, would it be possible to post a few pics showing the innards of the s701 satellite and how to open it?

Thanks guys and goodluck.

Vij

ps: i haven't had any problems with my firewire port. Though apart from the ac-adapter plug, the cdrw/dvd drive doesn't work at times. (That's okay though in my case, as i have an external dvd-burner.)

Vij:
Once my machine was warmed up, any touching of the keyboard, touchpad or even the palm rest would cause enough interference.

The card I needed was 32MB. I first got a card on eBay that I thought would be right, but turned out to be the 64MB card. It didn't work at all, but the guy took it back. It was resold (item 6745243292). You need to make sure it is the right version. They all are called FMC2G1. This item was sold saying it is compatible with all the models, but I believe it will only work in a S701, S702 and S901. You might send an email to the buyer of that item and see if he is getting the right card, although I had no way to check that the card worked. The Toshiba part number of the 32MB card is P000341430, while the 64MB card is P000349220. I think that the 64MB card may be available from Toshiba, but the 32MB card is harder to find. As far as taking it apart, it is harder than a desktop machine. Here's what I remember: Take out the battery. You need to remove the keyboard by popping off the plastic piece over the on/off switches to expose 2 screws. The KB swings up. The ribbon cables need to be released. The plastic piece where they attach to the MB need to be pried up about 1/16". I think there is 1 ribbon for the KB, one for the touchpad, one for the little LCD. There are also 2 cables to the video card, one to the on/off switch and one for speakers. There are 4 screws under the KB. Lots of the screws on the bottom need to come out, including 1 in the hard disk space. I took one little one out under the battery, but I never knew if it was needed. There was one under the phone/ethernet jacks. The video card is held by 2 screws. In my case, the case and the keyboard were discolored from heat, right over the video chip.

I came away thinking that they made it extra hard to take apart just to keep people out. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures. Keep track of what screw goes where. There are lots of sizes. You can send me an email if you start to take it apart and have questions. Here is an online site where they say you can get the 64MB card.

http://www.sparepartswarehouse.com/T...top,Parts.aspx

The price for exchange is less than the guy paid on eBay. I think your old card will qualify for exchange pricing, unless you spilled coffee or something on it.

I think dealers can get the 32MB card if they lie to Toshiba and say it is for an extended warranty. Mine came in a Toshiba box.

Good luck

richk you rule!!!
my video card seems fairly stable at the moment, so i'll wait a while before i replace it. that'll give some of the others here worse afflicted than me a chance to get one, in case they have a limited supply. Looking forward to hearing some more success stories :-)
Even $189.33 is better than the $300 toshiba ask just to take a look, do nothing and send it back!
j

Hi rich,

Thanks very much for the info on the video card. I'm trying to find out if spareparts.com can ship to the Netherlands. I also checked ebay as you mentioned, but none of the sellers are willing to ship internationally.

And though I haven't yet taken apart my Satellite, the details you gave will be very useful.

Hopefully things work out with our laptops, because the 5105 is still pretty good to be replaced.

Vij

Toshiba dosen't have the GeForce 440 video card

I have a Toshiba 5105-S702 that I had to send in for the video artifact problems. Through out the process I was getting that the "part was on backorder, it should be in Friday" At 6 weeks, I got a phone call saying the part had come in and it they were installing it then, I would get a call tommorow with the tracking #. They never called me to say the part was DOA. I called back a week or so later and was given that it was waiting for parts, and they would be in Friday. It took them another 6 weeks to get another VGA card in, and then when they returned the computer, they failed to return the power supply.

Their offered replacement has a 800x600 screen instead of the 1600x1200, and they wanted me to sign a gag order for any of their proposed settlements.

I have kept track of my dealing with Toshiba (Call logs to them, screen captures with the notes on how long my machine was in their care, etc. ) I would love to go in on a class action lawsuit.

I believe that the first thing that everyone involved should do is contact the Better Bussiness Bureau. It takes a few weeks because of the giving Toshiba time to respond.

The Vice Presisdent of Support was quoted in USAToday sometime in July or August of 2004 and his name is John Keyser. If you combine the info you learn at the BBB website, you can likely figure out his e-mail.

I spoke briefly with a lawyer when this machine was awaiting repairs back in August about suing for false advertizing of their warrenty. If no one is currently in discussions with a lawyer, I can go and contact him again.

Toshiba not having the GeForce4 440

This is the contents of the e-mail I received from Aaron Hardin at Toshiba that highlights my point about them not having the VGA cards back in August. It also highlights that they had at least 2 other 5105's in their shop that had the bad video card. Not in this message, but they had already used the VGA card from their complete test machine.


--------
Aug 31, 2004
Chris,
Just had a chance to read this email, I wanted to confirm that I was not able to locate a working VGA for your machine. I tried everything I could but we only had 2 of these 5105's in our New Product Return area, and both of the VGA's were defective. I will continue my search tomorrow am to see if we happened to receive any more 5105's. In regards to your point that no one called you to update you on the delayed repair, it is our policy that customers who are waiting for parts for more than 5 days are called and updated. Apparently this did not happen in your case and I will find out why. As for the website, we do update this site with current status of your repair. I will talk with you tomorrow.


******************************************
Aaron Hardin
Toshiba Computer Systems Division
Depot Program Manager
949-461-4486
949-587-6648 fax
*****************************************
<Truncated E-mail being responded to>

Toshiba and Graphics Series 5100

I just purchased a new video card for my Toshiba 5100 series laptop which is having the exact same problem as described here. However I am not certain how to get to the video card to change it. Can anyone help me in accessingthe video card on this notebook cpmputer?