So, I've been acting as local tech support for a friend (mostly software stuff - removing toolbars), but I'm stumped with a hardware issue; the screen on her Acer Aspire 5253 randomly becomes corrupted.
- This was happening before the update to Windows 10 (was on Windows 7) as well as after, obviously.
- Monitoring heat doesn't reveal anything obvious - the temperature was staying below 60C while under moderate load, which appears to be normal for this model. Note that while this shot is of the login/lock screen, this can happen at any time (or not at all for quite a while).
- After it happens, plugging in a monitor does nothing (and display switch key doesn't help).
- Ctl+Alt+Del would not act as a way to shut down the system - the only recovery is hard-reset via the power button.
- Windows logging doesn't appear to have any events related to this... or the shutdown , IIRC (been a while since I had my mitts on this, she's remote) Startup proceeds as normal (no recovery/repair process).
- possibly related: during Windows 10 startup, the display can wait a minute or more on a black screen, during which the startup sound plays. Not consistent.
- I've seen this question, but am unsure how to check VRAM specifically. memchk (and the hard drive) reported clean.
Any recommendations for things to look at to help with diagnosis, or things I should try? This isn't completely critical - her main device is an ipad - but would be good to get fixed.
22 Answers
Try downloading MSI Kombuster. It is a GPU stress testing tool, and has several stress testing options, from shadows to VRAM load testing. I would suggest downloading that and giving it a run to see if (specifically the VRAM test) causes any corruption issues. Through a bit of research, I can see that the CPU onboard is an AMD E-350, with an integrated Radeon HD 6310 GPU. Some further research on the GPU shows that the 'VRAM' for the GPU is shared memory - which means it will be using inbuilt system RAM for most (pretty much all) of it's memory. I would also suggest booting into the BIOS and having a poke around to see if you can find anything related to the shared memory available. If you find that it's at something like 32mb, try increasing it up to at least 512mb (if supported), although I wouldn't go any higher as the device only has 2GB of RAM (stock). If the increased shared memory doesn't fix it, try putting memtest onto a USB and booting into that. Let it run through at least 1 pass of tests, which may take quite awhile. If ANY errors come up in the test, your system RAM is suspect.
If none of these bring up any errors, than some other piece of hardware is/has failed - most likely the CPU/GPU is overheating, or the CPU/GPU itself is failing.
2There are two things that this could be, either a bad LCD screen or the integrated graphics are going bad. Since you stated that plugging in a monitor after this happens doesn't help (and by looking at the picture), I'm sure it's the integrated graphics that is the issue. The only way to fix this is to replace the motherboard.
Since you stated that this happens kind of randomly, I would plug in a monitor and mirror the display. When the crazy graphics happens if the laptop screen and the external monitor are messed up, then the integrated graphics is the culprit of the problem. If the crazy graphics only happens on the laptop screen, then there is something wrong with the LCD monitor on the laptop.
