BleepingComputer.com: Laptop screen glitches, then freezes or reboots.

Lately I've been having a very frustrating problem with my Dell Latitude D830 laptop, running Windows XP Service Pack 3. Anyway, for the past few days it has begun displaying graphics glitches: a "blinking" black screen on and off, covering anything colored white with pink speckles all over it, and sometimes either freezing to a solid black or pink screen with a few random lines in a square where my mouse cursor is, or rebooting on its own. Worried I might have a virus, I ran both Malwarebytes and Norton full scans and both came up clean. I'm not sure if it's a software issue or a hardware problem. I'm not terribly computer literate, but hopefully I've included enough information. Anyone have any ideas as to what might be causing this and how I can fix it?

Try running through the steps given here:

How to receive help diagnosing Blue Screens and Windows crashes

The link for malware scanners goes to a 404 page, and my computer hasn't generated any memory dump files since the problem started. (The most recent one was a minidump dated 12-14-09, and search didn't turn up a memory.dmp) What should I do from here?

Have a look in the Event Viewer for any errors at the time of the freezes.

To open the Event Viewer go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer. Alternately, go to Start > Run and type in "eventvwr.msc" (without the quotes) and press Enter.

Check in all the categories.

If you find an error that occurred at the time right-click on it and select properties. Copy the information in the window and post it back here.

How To Use the Event Viewer

Sounds like hardware issue to me. If it keeps rebooting like that chances are your processor is overheating.

Wow, there's a lot there. I don't know if this is from when my computer crashed or when it crashed trying to reboot right afterwards but here's what it says:

The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
BHDrvx86

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.


Also, every few minutes another entry gets added that reads like this:

Your computer was not able to renew its address from the network (from the DHCP Server) for the Network Card with network address 001D09D17494. The following error occurred:
The semaphore timeout period has expired. . Your computer will continue to try and obtain an address on its own from the network address (DHCP) server.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.


I don't know if that's related, but there are a lot of them.

I'll make a note of the time the next time it happens and check the error log then.

This post has been edited by Alef1: 10 February 2010 - 11:27 PM

Alright, last night my laptop rebooted itself seemingly at random. This was the last log entry before that happened.

Your computer was not able to renew its address from the network (from the DHCP Server) for the Network Card with network address 001D09D17494. The following error occurred:
The semaphore timeout period has expired. . Your computer will continue to try and obtain an address on its own from the network address (DHCP) server.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

I don't think that error message is related to the problem.

As WisconsinBills said, this could be caused by overheating. I would try blowing out the vents of the laptop with compressed air to ensure they are not clogged with dust.

Well, for the past few days I've been making sure to let my computer cool down whenever it starts acting up and it seems to be normal the rest of the time. Thanks for the help.

Dell's D8xx models have been known to have issues with the monitor cable going from motherboard to display. The way I diagnose the cable is if it goes into the strange screen apply pressure on the very top of the base unit near the monitor. (Above the power and sound switches) If the screen jumps back to normal you have a cable issue. Sometimes reseating will help. This would not cause a reboot issue though...

Oh wait a minute. A while back I took the keyboard off to clean out the insides, and the monitor cable runs just underneath where it latches in. It might have gotten damaged from that, because I couldn't get the keyboard quite on the way it was. Today the problem came back, and it took me quite a while to get my laptop running again, so I'm not sure if overheating is all of the problem. When I sent off my error report to Microsoft, it sent me to a webpage asking me to update my drivers. Well, I followed the instructions to update my drivers but it says I have the newest ones. Is the update wizard reliable, or could a damaged cable cause it to think drivers are messed up?

Edit: Two other things I've noticed that haven't happened before when I have to reboot my computer. 1) a message pops up at login saying the firewall is off. It fixes itself after a minute or so, but it never has done that before. 2) I get a One-Click Support box from Norton Antivirus 2010 offering help with error "3039,65545" without me ever clicking it.

Double edit: I picked this out of Event Viewer after my laptop died again a few minutes ago. Looks important, anyone know what it means?

The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
APPDRV
BHDrvx86
ccHP
eeCtrl
Fips
intelppm
SRTSPX
SymIRON
SYMTDI
Tosrfcom

For more information, see Help and Support Center at

This post has been edited by Alef1: 18 February 2010 - 05:03 PM

Idk if this is significant or not, but my laptop boots just fine in safe mode. Would it still do that if there was a hardware problem like with the monitor cable or if it's overheated?

Problem solved. My laptop came with a faulty GPU, one of the Nvidia GeForce 8M series. I've uninstalled the drivers for it, and haven't had a problem since.

Your video card is dying due to overheating.