This may be a loaded question. It dpends on how you trade and what your computing requirements are. I will tell you what I use. I have 2 laptops: HP dv9730us, 17 inch screen. This one is no good. A lemon. Sent back for repair 3 times. Hard disk, CPU mother board, LCD screen issues at different times. Compaq Presario A900 Notebook PC, also 17 inch screen. This one I like. Bought about the same time as my HP laptop and so far no problem. It seems that Compaq laptops are more robust - from its mobile computing history - than HP. Eventhough "same company". No they are not the same. HP is HP. Compaq is Compaq. I feel that other brands like Sony, Toshiba, etc. are priced too high. I picked up my HP for about $800, and Compaq for $650 or so. That was almost 2 years ago.
all signs point to a bad video card, which from my limited understanding, is not easily replaced on a laptop.
Good to know!! As far as my needs, its not much at this point. No programming, just a lot of charts and a few websites open. Will need at least support for one more monitor, if not two.
So strange. Got everything loaded back up again and everything seems to be working fine (crossing fingers). I doubt its permanent and very confusing. I even got two BSOD's yesterday but today loaded up TT and everything appears to be working fine, charts and all.
Hello, I have the same laptop you described in a posting in Feb. I have the same problems, display issues with numerous exclamation marks on screen. I can only get it to operate in safe mode. How did you fix your issue. I am fearful of losing all of my family photos by reinstalling the OS. I am unable to copy them off before reinstalling. Thanks for any help you can provide.
Did you try System Restore? (your first post; you're new here; we don't know you so we assume you're coming in completely in the dark). If that does not work for you, read on... If the files are that important and you have no backup, get another hard drive and install your OS on that. Then you can recover your files from the current drive after you're back up and running. If the new drive does not fix the problem, return the drive. There's a man on here named Scat who is the (a) master of GPU's. Maybe he knows something about what you're describing. He'll be along within a day or so.
Sounds like the problem appears intermittently(?) Those are tough to troubleshoot... especially in a laptop. The fact that it's intermittent suggests it's hardware related...
That you can boot into Safe Mode = you CAN copy your valuable files... get a USB drive (flash drive OK if big enough, though slow)... and copy files from your hard drive to the USB drive. I don't know about a fix... harder to troubleshoot laptops because it's difficult to isolate hardware components. Once you get squared away, suggest establishing a proper backup routine.
There maybe an issue with this route. When in safe mode the USB may not be accessible. Only newer computers have USB support in BIOS. jparker: I am a bit confused... If you can get into safe mode, then it seems the display may be working fine? Do you have an issue with the video display or the disk drive?