4w ago

No one: Laptop. Could this be hardware or software related?

This has happened 3 times in the past 2 days, any advice? It goes away after reboots but always comes back.

Update: So it could be GPU death, how exciting, especially for a 1.5 year old laptop. As of now it hasn’t terribly affected my workflow, but if this persists even after future kernel/driver updates, it may be rip. I am still hopeful that it could be software related, but time will tell!

This one is a little more interesting

Update 2: I was using Windows for testing purposes, and it happened again! This was immediately after picking the laptop up, so it is definitely hardware related. This time it made a horrible noise as well, answering some of the questions. So somehow by picking the device up, maybe the internals are slightly bent, causing the issues?

52 comments

Usually a sign of a dying gpu. Used to work in a laptop repair shop.
- Does it continue playing sound when it does this? That supports the gpu theory if so.
  Also, next time it does this see if plugging an external monitor in displays anything. If it’s the same pattern it’s probably the gpu, if not possibly monitor or cable.
  
  I haven’t ever been playing media when it happens, so I’m not sure. Also yes, I have tried plugging in external monitors, or trying to ssh in, but none work. It’s as if the computer freezes as well.

I'm not unconvinced this is just a screenshot of Dwarf Fortress during some kind of weird rain storm in an evil biome.

GPU.
Update or rollback drivers and see if it stops.
- Are you sure? The mouse cursor appears to render correctly.
  
  To me, it looks like defective vram. The cursor is rendered at a different physical memory location, which may still be intact.
  ETA: the cursor being intact is actually very important- that quite effectively rules out the screen itself (LCD panel), since they wouldn't care if it's the cursor.
  
  GPU ram could behave like this.
  A chunk of dying ram would affect sections of code allowing proper rendering of cursers over garbled backgrounds.
  Also, a restart could reset the ram for a while bringing it back from the dead.

GPU is dying.
- Yeah that gpu is deep fried.

The mouse cursor showing up correctly rules out a physical connection issue to the screen.
What is supposed to be on the screen right now? Is it just the deskop, an app, a game... ? That might provide more insight.
But I'd guess a hardware issue off the bat. Something with the GPU, or perhaps more specifically with VRAM.
- The current picture is of a browser (Floorp).

looks like you did a sudo ▓░▒
- Never do a sudo psi thundershock

It's the GPU, almost certainly the solder joints. So how far are you willing to go?
You can pull the MB and bake it in an oven. Fixed a card or two that way, didn't last very long. Damned fine line between too much and too little heat and time. Bon chance!
In related news, MBs can be pretty cheap on eBay.
- Don't put it in the oven. Chances are it will just die at that point.
  
  Also it will release fumes that you don't want near your food.
- I assume the reflowing solder in the oven trick doesn't reliably work anymore in the era of the high temp solders that are common in laptop manufacturing these days. Bringing the whole board up to flow temp in something as crude as a home oven is almost certainly going to fuck something else on the board.
  I recall trying to do a laptop repair with dinky little soldering iron I got at the hardware store and it could not melt a single thing on the board I touched it to. Definitely not a faulty iron because I used it to successfully solder other things. This was at least five years ago. If that little toy couldn't do it, then the entire board would need to exceed that temp in an oven, which is probably a bad idea since the iron was still managing to visibly scorch things despite not melting any solder.
  Invest in a proper heat gun and learn how to use it, or just give up and give it to someone else who has one, imo.
- This is, for the most part, a myth and not worth doing. Reflowing is not not repair.
- In my experience I think the trick is to underheat it but leave it in the oven a bit longer.

Reseat your RAM before trying a more expensive fix

You could boot into a live system and see if the problem shows up there. If so, it's very likely the hardware.

The pattern looks like a GPU, more specifically a problem with VRAM.
This looks like a low to mid range HP laptop, so I question whether or not it even has dedicated graphics.
Systems with integrated graphics share RAM to use for graphics functions.
To test VRAM, one would use Nvidia MATS/MODS or AMD TServer/Memtune. They are not very accessible for the average user.
To test RAM, use Memtest86. This one is free and relatively straightforward.

Does it happen faster the 2nd time around? Probably a heat issue. Make sure the fans are working and the heatsink fins are clear of dust and debris. Try that first, and run a gpu stress test https://mprep.info/gpu/ but it could also be drivers as others have mentioned, or even a faulty or incorrectly seated ram module.
- Heat is probably a trigger, but the GPU shouldn't artifact even under high heat, the system would throttle or shutdown.
  Heat may have caused this long term, and dusting may alleviate the immediate symptoms, but the GPU is still dying

is this issue also on in the bios?
yes = hardware error
no = software error
- Artifacting like that is GPU, will probably onset easier when under stress

My intuition is that it is a hardware failure. GPUs can develop issues that show up intermittently. You can try running GPU stress-testing software to check if that's the case.
However, did you recently update your graphics drivers? If you did, try rolling back to an older version.

It could easily be the GPU drivers or the display cable.
There any many other possibilities, but hopefully it’s one of those two because the fix is is either cheap or free.

Its an HP, never buy HP!
- This. Especially since they still have the worst hinge designs on notebooks I've ever seen and they have continued to build them so shoddily for years. It must be deliberate at this point.
  
  It is cause it makes them money. I wanted to change the battery on a family members hp laptop. I opened it and everything is glued/solder together. Told her to get a dell!
- Which brand do you recommend
  
  Dell laptops are much better!
  
  I’m probably going to look at Dell or Lenovo for a next laptop, they tend to be of higher quality. Plus old thinkpads are fast and inexpensive, so I may start looking at eBay for a good deal.
- I had this specific model given for free by my high school a bunch of years ago and it is the worst chassis I ever saw. Many of my friends had fissures on theirs by the end of school
- Very fucking helpful

Are you sure this is merely mildly infuriating?

This looks to me like the RAM is not properly seated. I can't speak for this particular model, but I've seen cases where putting light pressure on one side of a laptop was enough to cause this because the chips were loose in their sockets. Maybe try removing the bottom cover and slightly wigglig them to see if you can reproduce it. I've fixed it on some Thinkpad models by placing a thin piece of rubber between the RAM and the mainboard to hold it in place.

Laptop GPUs are often connected using a ball grid array, which means that there aren't any pins and they just use a ball of solder to make the connection. If the laptop overheats enough, some of the solder may melt and move causing such issues.
- The heat to melt solder is well above the heat made by the cores in normal operation. It's more likely that the balls crack under stress in the heat/cooling cycles. (Also if the ball is at such a high temp, the core is likely way way higher, and that would damage the core)
- This happened to my laptop that I had a long time ago. I found a guide where I took out the motherboard, wrapped it in foil except where the GPU was, then used a blow dryer to heat the solder connecting the GPU to the mobo. Worked for another six months, then it happened again, so I replaced the system.

any chance it's overheating? did you clean the vents and checked the fans?

Run a hardware diagnostic

Try booting into the bios

Could be either hardware or software.
I'd try updating the bios and video drivers first, failing that it could be a failing video card. It could be the screen too.
To test if it's the screen or the video card, connect it to an external display and see what happens.