Ahh WTF? Issue with graphics on HP DV9700

Ok, so My friend asked me if I could repair his laptops for him, and he will pay me for it, which suits me, as I am 16 and I need a little extra money for my 4850, so I said fine.

The first laptop is a HP DV9700, he will be taking this tomorrow, and giving me the second, this isn't even relevant, don't know why I'm mentioning it..

Ok the point is, when I got it, It booted vista slowly, so I did format and reinstall, and when the screen shook slightly, it would go pixellated slightly, and get artifacts.

I fixed this (or so I thought) by cutting a small hole, and re routing the Gpu wire, as I had heard of a load of problems of the laptops Gpu problems, where the wire is squeezed, and it kinda kills it?

so anyway, it fixed, all was fine.

I called him, and told him it was fine, and he asked for win7, I said ok, and i'll charge you extra, so I installed 7, and now its back to pixels.

Well, I don't think its a Gpu problem, because Vista handled it well after, and It is now displaying at 640x480, with minimum colours.

If I mess around with the resolution settings, and colour settings, I can work my way back up to 1440x900, but he shouldn't and probably can't do this everytime he turns the computer on, so I need a fix, soon :/

Any Ideas/suggestions peoples?

Thanks in advance I guess

It looks like it's running in 8 bit mode
I'm not to sure how to change the colour mode but there must be some way to do it.
Hopefully I've helped in some way (I'm not sure if I did or not )

tinymouse2 said:

It looks like it's running in 8 bit mode
I'm not to sure how to change the colour mode but there must be some way to do it.
Hopefully I've helped in some way (I'm not sure if I did or not )

Click to expand...

Ya, I got this far, and I know how to set it to full colour, at 1440x900, but when I restart, it resets back to that.

Looks like the video driver failed and went to recovery mode!

RJARRRPCGP said:

Looks like the video driver failed and went to recovery mode!

Click to expand...

but it doesn't do this everytime? I just reinstalled vista, and for 2 restarts, it was fine, and now it is doing it again? is it likely to be a Gpu hardware failure? more than software/driver?

Hmm
All the symptoms make it sound like software but the fact that you've re-installed the drivers and vista would indicate a hardware issue.
Have you tried XP? Or even a basic linux (bootable CD) would tell you what'sup.

Seems like you got the wrong drivers on there.