Display problem with Acer AM3970-UR14P

quentin56178

About two weeks ago, the graphics card for my Acer Aspire AM3970-UR14P went out. I was just minding my own business (using Rosetta Stone, actually) when I got a BSOD that said VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE and mentioned atikmpag.sys as the source. That file is the driver for the AMD Radeon HD 7570 graphics card that came with my machine. From that point on, I have not been able to use any version of the AMD driver (it hasn't been updated since 2015 or so, anyway) without getting an immediate BSOD. The computer will function with the generic Windows display driver, but I get several 1-inch wide vertical stripes of corrupted pixels (usually pink or green -- it changes on different backgrounds). These stripes exist on every screen, including the Acer loading screen on initial boot and the BIOS screens.

My initial diagnosis was that there was a problem with the graphics card, so I bought a MSI GeForce GT 710 off Amazon. This card works over PCIe v2 x16, just like the original Radeon card, so I thought it would work. Well, it almost does. When I put the MSI card into the computer and booted it up, I got the Acer logo to show up without any stripes (yay!), but it never loaded Windows. It would give a short beep three times (several minutes apart), and then go to a black screen with cursor (MS-DOS style cursor, not a Windows arrow) in the upper left corner. I can't even get into the BIOS or the boot options.

What is the problem? Do I actually have a memory problem not a graphics card problem (in which case, why would it still boot up with the old graphics card?)? Is the MSI GeForce card not compatible with my Acer Aspire?

billsey

It would be possible the slot went bad rather than the card, or the card failing screwed up the slot as well. What happens when you boot it from the onboard video with no card installed at all?

quentin56178

Cool! I didn't realize this computer had on-board video until you mentioned it. However, both the HDMI and VGA ports have stickers over them that say "This port is disabled". I pulled off the sticker over the HDMI port and found the port had some rubber thing stuck inside. I worked at it for a while but could not get the rubber out.

Do slots go bad? That thought never occurred to me. But I still get video using the card, just somewhat corrupted. If the slot were bad, wouldn't the corrupted video be less usable, like screen flashing, etc? The video I get with the original card has very steady corruptions. The stripes of messed up video are almost always in the same places. About the only time they're not present is when the screen momentarily goes all black during the boot process (I also got it when I ran memtest). During that time, I get horizontal green lines. Also, when I tried the other graphics card, I did get clear video, just it wouldn't ever get past the logo screen.

Just on a lark, I ran memtest on the computer, getting horizontal green lines. Memtest showed 7 errors while running random number sequences. My thought is that while it's a sign I need to replace one or both of the memory modules, these errors shouldn't affect the video, because the video data would be processed by the GPU and use the 1GB of memory on the graphics card. Does that sound right?

billsey

Typically the onboard video gets enabled if you remove all other video cards, though on some models it requires enabling in the BIOS. Slots can go bad, just as most electronics can go bad. Typically when there is a problem with the slot it can be traced to corrosion on the contacts or failure of the chips that control data transfer from the slot. There are typically two buses on the slot plus a bunch of control pins. One bus is the address bus which determine what portion of memory is going to be transferred the other is the data bus which will hold the actual data. If there is a problem with a pin or pins on the address bus then the data will likely be from the wrong place in memory. If there's a problem with a pin or pins on the data bus then the data will likely be corrupt. The former can give you vertical stripes of garbage, the latter is more likely to give horizontal stripes. The problem is that problems a\on the card itself will often give the same symptoms, as will problems in the chipset on the motherboard that handle the connection to the slot. That's why I suggested trying without the video card at all. If it works fine it's less likely to be an issue with the motherboard, if it still fails it's most likely the motherboard. If it's not the motherboard then the next step is to try a different video card. If the problem is still there with a different video card it's likely the slot. Overall in most cases it'll be the video card that's causing the problem. They are more susceptible to failure due to the potential for a static electricity jolt when connecting to a monitor and when installing in the system.

The onboard memory issues are likely either a symptom of more things going bad with the motherboard or a problem with one or more memory sticks. The only real overlap between the two symptoms is the motherboard... As you surmise the video card has it's own memory and shouldn't be affected by the motherboard memory. Corrupted motherboard memory is much more likely to show as random crashes.

quentin56178

Sorry about taking so long to respond. School got a little busy, but I finally found some free time to look at this again.

It took a lot of prying with a utility knife and other pointy things from my toolkit, but I got the plastic plug out of the HDMI port. After removing the video card, I was able to get signal from the HDMI port without any modifications in the BIOS.

The image from the onboard video is great, with no vertical stripes. I guess that points back to the video card. Is there a list of compatible video cards or should I assume that anything that uses PCIe v2 x16 is compatible?

While trying to figure out why the Radeon HD7570 card doesn't look like the cards on Amazon, I googled the part number and found this list in the manual: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/232870/Acer-Aspire-M3970.html?page=113#manual (not sure why, but the original part number isn't in that list). Should I focus on cards in that list to find a replacement?

billsey

And now it's my turn to be apologetic about the slow response. There was a point in time where the x16 slots could only handle cards with 2GB or less memory, then the later ones allowed much more memory for the maximum. Your machine is easily old enough to be among those that don't support the newest GPUs, so I'd play it safe and get one of the older designs that have just 2GB onboard.