Question for C programmers, is my hypothesis about the max VGA resolution correct ? LOL, see below.

27 october 2021, toshiba laptop radeon 3D chip corrupted/damaged.

After two or three years of gaming on this Toshiba Laptop L670 and regularly cleaning it the 3D chip finally seems to have become "corrupted".

The result of this is that in windows in normal mode no text can be seen and no content of windows, just rectangles and that is it.

Fortunately somehow in SAFE mode windows still works probably thanks to a seperate VGA chip, maybe this is the onboard graphics chip of the intel processor but more likely it is the VGA chip/section inside the AMD graphics chip.

I also tested MS-DOS by booting from usb dos drive.

I played some DOOM and some civilization and some mario clone.

And in all dos games there were noticeable pixels that should not be there.

Now the question is what was damaged and how did it get damaged I have some hypothesis about this.

I already opened the whole laptop, swapped out memory, check everything cleaned it, removed some stickers did some more testing I am 99.9% convinced some kind of chip was now damaged or has some static electricity stuck in it..

Now the question is what damaged it and how:

Let me first tell you how this started because it might be relevant or maybe not.

I was playing World of Warships and suddenly all these weird triangles and weird effects started appearing. I shut down the computer restarted and then they were gone, after 30 minutes of playing or so the problem returned and this time it STAYED... which is a bit weird... but I have noticed this behaviour before... first electronics will seem to work again and then finally it fails ?!?! kinda strange.

Anyway windows with aero and 3d chip support does not work anymore... fortunately I can still use 1152 x 864 resolution ?! HAHAHA have you ever heard of such a weird resolution funny but true... probably some max VGA resolution or something.

Network still working, firefox still working, so at least I can browser for a new computer via firefox/web and such.

But first the hypothesis of what may have caused this:

I will tell you my main suspect:

1. Static electricity discharge through the fingers, through the laptop's keyboard directly into the 3D chip.

This static electricity is build up from the cloth-covered chair and maybe my moarning coat, usually I don't were that moarning coat but it might have caused a little bit too much static electricity build up.

It's probably a very small chance but apperently laptop can be vunerable to this.

Second main suspect is:

2. Prolonged periods of heat. Perhaps ATI/AMD's chip manufacturering technology is less good then INTEL's chip manufacturing technology.

Perhaps intel chips/transistors can handle heat better than ATI/AMDs transistor technology.

This may/could be a very important discovery and this may influence my future purchase decisions.

Later I will investigate if there is some merit to this hypothesis. I think so... intel vs amd may be using different transistor technology.

Both chips became roughly equal as hot, had the same heat exposure, the intel cpu chip might have even been hotter.

My assumption is that the intel cpu is left on the motherboard and the gpu is on the right of the motherboard.

I do believe the cpu is close to the cooler and the gpu is further away.

Perhaps the heat from the CPU first is piped through the GPU via heat pipes..

Maybe the HEAT from the CPU went into the GPU and damaged it and then intel might be to blame for some of that.

It may be hard to tell if this is the case and how the heatpipe technology is piped/working/flowing.

However on the way back maybe it goes past cpu again and such maybe not.. eventually it gets expelled via one tiny little heatsink on the left side of the motherboard.

If the cpu is on the left side then at least it is more "static electricity" resistent because that is where AWSD is at... it would have died a long time ago.

3. One other possibility is maybe thermal paste interface material dried up and is not conducting heat that well, but I don't think this is the case, the laptop felt quite cool after I cleaned it a few days ago.

Other things I did recently:

delete windows/system32/catroot and catroot2 folders, fucking annoying folders which get scanned by resource manager which slows down harddisk. since windows update is no longer available for windows 7 anyway might as well delete them.

I also tried reinstalling drivers by also forcefully removing them via device manager this was necessary because drivers could not remove themselfes.
drivers were successfully installed in safe mode I believe.

I also tried low resolution mode with normal mode but same probably can only see rectangles.

So basically my main two PCs are now damaged, at least the laptop is not smelly =D

I am amazed it took this long for the laptop to develop some kind of damage though, but I consider this proof laptop's are not made for gaming no matter what manufacturers say.

There is one more thing I like to report on:

Since a few days, I feel this strange tinglings in my left hand and arm somewhat too, like my left hand is "sleeping".

I am not sure why this is, I was worried that I would develop some kind of damage from holding my hands so close to electric fields of laptops and this may now be the case, but it might have other causes as well, I will name them here:

1. Perhaps to much AWSD usage because of World of Warships carrier gameplay.. So this may be an early stage of RSI.

2. Perhaps the pain in my neck from titling my head on the couch may have something to do with it, it's almost gone, but maybe some kind of nerve is jammed or was slightly jammed.

3. Could be some fat ball jamming a nerve somewhere.

4. Could be left over effect of natural pain killers to surpress pain in neck.

5. Could be the akward and fucked up position of keys on laptop.

6. Perhaps DNA in left hand damaged by electro magnetic fields from CPU.

7. Perhaps electricity leakage from CPU flowing through hands.
I can feel a very slight tingling in my right hand as well now that I am paying attention..

Perhaps the damage to the GPU is somehow leaking electricity through my hand.

8. The heat from the CPU which can be felt on the AWSD keys and ethernet port which I sometime touch for fun and to feel if it's getting hot... perhaps pro-longed periods of heat to my left hand caused this.

9. Perhaps drinking too much coca cola caused this, nerve damage from ingrediants or maybe titling head back to get last drops out of it ! ;)

10. Lack of sleep and irregular sleeping patterns. Though I had a good night sleep past night but tingling still there.

Could be a combination of some things.

I am hoping that the tinglings will go away. For now I assume that it is a combination of early stage of RSI, pain in neck related, natural pain killer related, head titling when lying on couch.

Though I do worry it may be caused by electric field or heat from CPU or whatever is under that AWSD.

I will try to give my neck some rest and if this left hand issue remains I will post an update...

These pain issues started occuring when I was impersonating somebody that actually broke his neck a long time ago ! I should not have done that, I may have caused more damaged to my neck mussles and nerves than I realized was possible ! ;)

Reminds me of this tik-tok news post, don't watch people with tiks or tourrette syndrome, kids seem to be replicating those ticks ! =D

Anyway I am greatfull that I can still use this PC somewhat, that's cool !

This experience has convinced me not to buy laptop for main usage, it sucks to much dust in needs too many times cleaning, it may be bad for hands, and it may die sooner because of overheat.

Bye for now,
Skybuck.

11. One last thing I like to report on is I also had some decent ammount of blood loss through nose, I try to prevent this the coming days.

Perhaps the left arm/left hand is more effected by blood less than right arm/right hand.

In a few weeks my body should have created enough new blood cells so then everything should be back to normal...

Bye for now,
Skybuck.

On 27.10.21 09:25, skybuck2000 wrote:
> 11. One last thing I like to report on is I also had some decent ammount of blood loss through nose, I try to prevent this the coming days.
>
> Perhaps the left arm/left hand is more effected by blood less than right arm/right hand.
>
> In a few weeks my body should have created enough new blood cells so then everything should be back to normal...
>
> Bye for now,
> Skybuck.
>

I would worry more about your (keft and right) cerebral emispheres than
arms and hands.

I and Windows 7 managed to get most of the functionality of the computer back up, like maximize functionality.

That means:

Maximum resolution, HDMI audio working, Web browsers working all in normal mode.

The solution was to do the following and I also made some videos about it to show it all:

1. Boot to safe mode.
2. Disable the graphics chip.
3. Boot to normal mode.
4. Change the windows theme to windows classic theme to avoid 3D acceleration of the desktop.
5. Boot to safe mode.
7. Change firefox webbrowser, disable 3d acceleration.
8. Change opera webbrowser, disable 3d acceleration and restart browser to store settings.

Step 7 and 8 could be tried after step 2 to save one reboot.

I am not yet 100% convinced that the 3D chip is broken but most likely, there is probably some damage deep inside of it, however it could also be some kind of damage software stack. Anyway here are three videos shining some light on this. If you want to see the broken graphics check out video 2 and the bonus video.
In video 1 quake was fullscreen preventing bandicam from recording the broken graphics however something else can be noticed, "weird pixels".
Video 1 also shows how to do some of these steps above.

How To Get Windows Working On Laptop With Broken 3D Chip Part 1 of 2:
https://youtu.be/Bh4bPHgHGSQ

How To Get Windows Working On Laptop With Broken 3D Chip Part 2 Of 2 Quake 3 Arene Demo Evidence:
https://youtu.be/jiqZuxCcWBM

Bonus video, me having some fun with this broken 3D chip, "Skynet in the code inside" ! LOL:
https://youtu.be/Fsw8XQTpr5E

One more thing I noticed, special message to Alex Jones:

Your video player on banned.video does not work in windows 7 safe mode and firefox ? Weird ! ;)

Don't worry, your videos do play with 3d acceleration disabled, just not in safe mode, weird huh... maybe now it might work or probably not, I know strange...

Bye for now,
Skybuck.

On Wednesday, October 27, 2021 at 6:55:24 PM UTC+2, Andrea Croci wrote:
> On 27.10.21 09:25, skybuck2000 wrote:
> > 11. One last thing I like to report on is I also had some decent ammount of blood loss through nose, I try to prevent this the coming days.
> >
> > Perhaps the left arm/left hand is more effected by blood less than right arm/right hand.
> >
> > In a few weeks my body should have created enough new blood cells so then everything should be back to normal...
> >
> > Bye for now,
> > Skybuck.
> >
> I would worry more about your (keft and right) cerebral emispheres than
> arms and hands.

Dont know what that means but I am feeling much better already in my left hand... soon it will probably be over...

Bye for now,
Skybuck.

On 10/27/2021 9:34 PM, skybuck2000 wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 27, 2021 at 6:55:24 PM UTC+2, Andrea Croci wrote:
>> On 27.10.21 09:25, skybuck2000 wrote:
>>> 11. One last thing I like to report on is I also had some decent ammount of blood loss through nose, I try to prevent this the coming days.
>>>
>>> Perhaps the left arm/left hand is more effected by blood less than right arm/right hand.
>>>
>>> In a few weeks my body should have created enough new blood cells so then everything should be back to normal...
>>>
>>> Bye for now,
>>> Skybuck.
>>>
>> I would worry more about your (keft and right) cerebral emispheres than
>> arms and hands.
>
> Dont know what that means but I am feeling much better already in my left hand... soon it will probably be over...
[..]

lol! Sorry, but that made me laugh for some reason.