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I spend money on good laptops. Occasionally, there are design issues, and I'm smelling one. A few months back, my precision m4700 started sporadically locking up - clearly a video card issue. It got worse, and finally the unit would not boot at all. I was prepared for the typical support process and after demonstrating that I had 4 backup drives that *all* failed to boot, Dell agreed, my card was bad. So they changed it out.
All was well.
Until tonight 
Scrambled graphics, no BS, gone.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Have you tried turning it off and then turning it back on again?
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Sure, that fixes it until the next time. The problem is that I can easily have dozens of windows up, depending on what projects I'm working on. So crashes are painful (stating the obvious).
I have two theories I'm working now - the Radeon cards are just $$@# or swapping between HDMI and display port might trigger this. I'm taking the easy road - just swap the card out.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I'd make sure you have the latest drivers for the video card. If they are Radeon cards, then most likely it is an AMD/ATI card. Go to their site instead of Dell's. Dell tends to not keep them updated.
Also a BIOS update may be in order as well. If there is a newer BIOS for your machine, get it and install it.
I've seen weird problems like this get fixed by driver and BIOS updates.
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Yeah, all good suggestions, and I am up to date. In fact, the AMD drivers are actually way way out ahead of anything Dell is supplying. The last time this started happening, I went the driver route, because I could not defend myself. But I pulled a backup from my safety deposit box (6 months old), and it would not boot either.
I think I smell what might be annoying the graphics card. I use this laptop at two different locations. In my customer's lab, I use the HDMI connection and at home the display port. I'm going to change the way that's done and see if it doesn't stop.
I would not rule out a design issue on the card itself.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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QFTD: "Computers are great for solving all sorts of problems that you wouldn't have if there were no computers."
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
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Well, new motherboard and graphics card to be installed next week. No argument from Dell. That makes me wonder.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Meh. Dell is getting as bad as Comcast.
Tuesday: Hi, this is the dell automated system. We'd like to fix your laptop tomorrow between 830AM and 530PM.
Me: wtf?
Wednesday: waiting for call to refine service... at 1130AM - your tech will be on-site about 230pm. He'll call.
It's now 4pm. I'm back on "ole reliable'. As soon as I login, the Display Driver restarts. I'm hoping it's just a one of burp.
Tech had the audacity to suggest my backup power supply (same voltage, same current, etc, just not the absurdly overpriced model with the Dell logo) was part of the problem. Right....
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Son of a $itch!
So, laptop is BSOD now at least twice a day. Today, I'm going to pop out my SSD and replace it with an older backup. The elephanting technician reassembled the unit wrong. I cannot get the damn hard drive out (usually you just press the release and it ejects). In trying to coax it out, it has that feeling that it's hung up on something for the motherboard.
I don't think this is going to end well.
So now Dell wants me to return the unit to Depot - not with my SSD in it... Just hell no...
And I was going to work today. Reaching for bottle
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Ok, I have just read up on Optogenetics and this is amazing, imo (yeah yeah, I am way behind).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I64X7vHSHOE[^]
I guess we just need medicine and fiber cable in our brains and we'll be good to go. The video is worth the watch just to see the mouse run in circles and the cable to its head. 
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JoeSox wrote: I guess we just need medicine and fiber cable in our brains and we'll be good to go.
That's disgusting. Combining algae DNA with nerve cells is just so effin wrong.
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: That's disgusting.
Perhaps, but the scientific method does not 'think' of terms of disgusting or not.
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JoeSox wrote: but the scientific method does not 'think' of terms of disgusting or not.
Nor does it think in terms of right or wrong. 
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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RyanDev wrote: Nor does it think in terms of right or wrong.
That's fine, because the universe doesn't operate that way.
The scientific method does, however, operate on the basis "proven correct" and "proven incorrect".
And that's also fine, because the universe doesn't do anything that it has proven incorrect.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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JoeSox wrote: Perhaps, but the scientific method does not 'think' of terms of disgusting or not.
Of course except for the fact that science has studied exactly that.
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Marc Clifton wrote: Combining algae DNA with nerve cells is just so effin wrong.
Why? It's all the same stuff.
You know that bananas share 55% of our DNA, don't you? And the percentage is only that low because they ain't got room for the other 45%.
Life on Earth is just one thing. All the "huge differences" between creatures/plants/etc. are pretty much cosmetic.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: All the "huge differences" between creatures/plants/etc. are pretty much cosmetic.
Well, that's one way of looking at things and is definitely useful at times. Other times though, I feel it's important to look at the differences and uniqueness and recognize that we are screwing around with things that are highly unnatural. Chalk it up to my perspective on life resulting from my particular spiritual beliefs.
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: that we are screwing around with things that are highly unnatural.
Just curious exactly what part of your keyboard, monitor and computer is "natural"?
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jschell wrote: Just curious exactly what part of your keyboard, monitor and computer is "natural"?
That's an absurd analogy which indicates to me that it's probably a waste of time to even answer. But here goes -- what does my keyboard, monitor and computer have to do with using a virus to inject DNA into nerve cells to change the behavior of the neuron?
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: That's an absurd analogy
You said "that we are screwing around with things that are highly unnatural."
Which is exactly what I quoted. Computers are not natural. Nor is the human interface to them.
Consequently by your statement the very act of responding on this board is "unnatural".
Which was in fact my point.
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Mark_Wallace wrote: Life on Earth is just one thing.
Speak for yourself. I'm no banana. 
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Yes, bananas are quite big.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: All the "huge differences" between creatures/plants/etc. are pretty much cosmetic.
The brain, emotions, choice, are those just cosmetic? Or are you saying the human brain and emotions and choice are the same in all plants, creatures, etc?
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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We don't currently have any way to tell whether plants and animals have what we would recognise as "emotions", or whether they have anything similar to our illusion of choice / free-will.
For the more complex animals, it would be pretty surprising if they didn't.
Of course, that would make what we've been doing to them over the millennia quite horrific.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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