Vertical flickering lines

[Gelston]

Computer:
Asus G73JH

Processor: Intel Core i7 720QM
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate
Chipset: Mobile Intel HM55 Express
Memory: 8 GB DDR3 667MHz SODIMM
Display: 17.3" Full HD (1920x1080) Color-Shine (Glare-type)
Video Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870, 1G GDDR5 VRAMProblem: It started when I was playing Civ 5 one day, vertical grey lines began to appear. At first I thought it was just the game, but it continued after. Anytime I have a bunch of movement on the screen (such as scrolling text in GS) these vertical lines appear. They do go away if I move the window around or highlight over and then unhighlight, but they do reappear.



What I have done: At first I thoguht this was the common problem known as GSOD, so I took all those steps to repair. I updated the bios and the vbios. Had the same problem afterwards. I dug around a little more and found a screen shot for the GSOD which was definitely not what my problem is. Following that, I completely wiped every driver on my computer for everything... From display to sound to everything else. After reapplying them the problem remains, although it did stop when I didn't have any drivers on my computer. Upon reapplying the manufacturer(ASUS is weird about updates only working that come from them) approved graphics drivers, the problem resumed. This leads me to believe that whenever the graphics card is active, it causes the problem.


So, anyone have any ideas?

[Asha]

Monitor is on the fritz? Only thing you haven't mentioned. Sounds a lot like what happened to my old laptop like 3 times and had to be sent back all 3 times.

[Gelston]

Well, I know it isn't the monitor. It only seems to do this in windows and no where else(such as bios menu and all that before the computer loads windows.)

Windows
Problem: Video hardware error
Files that help describe the problem:
WD-20111220-2003.dmp
sysdata.xml
WERInternalMetadata.xml
View a temporary copy of these files
Warning: If a virus or other security threat caused the problem, opening a copy of the files could harm your computer.

Windows
Problem: Video hardware error
Files that help describe the problem:
WD-20110808-0157.dmp
sysdata.xml
WERInternalMetadata.xml
View a temporary copy of these files
Warning: If a virus or other security threat caused the problem, opening a copy of the files could harm your computer.

Any idea what the above means? Windows just identified that problem.

[Sylvan Dreams]

Graphics card

[Gelston]

Graphics card

Yeah, I have pretty much arrived at that... Any idea how to fix it?

[Rinualdo]

update drivers.
Turn on/off vsync
replace card.

[subzero]

Chances are good that the way to fix it is to replace it. Driver likely isn't the issue unless you've updated recently and as far as I know, vsync issues usually result in graphic tearing which is not what you're describing.

[Gelston]

I was afraid it might be a problem with actual hardware, which is bad because this is a laptop.

[Sylvan Dreams]

I had a similar issue on a desktop. It started out with vertical lines and eventually the entire screen display would split up into little squares and the squares would get shuffled around. I updated everything I possible could, even unrelated drivers and that subdued the problem for a while. Eventually, the problem resurfaced and only replacing the video card fixed it.

[Rinualdo]

You may also consider cleaning out the area around the video card for dust, etc.

[Gelston]

I opened it up, it was clean in there. I decided to take it into a PC store today. I'll know next week how much it'll cost me to fix. Hopefully it is software, because it is pretty pricey to repair laptop hardware.

[Gelston]

It was a hardware issue, sent it back to Asus and they replaced the entire system board. Turns out it was under a two year parts warranty. I was thinking it was a one year.