Hi. I have an old Acer Aspire 1650 (Pentium M 1,73Ghz, 1GB RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon X300 128MB) from a friend that shows random vertical dotted lines on screen, mostly on the right side. I'm pretty certain it's a problem with the graphics card/chip, because if I install the supplied drivers, I immediately get a BSOD after reboot, even after a new XP installation. He used to spend hours gaming, so possibly it could be a broken solder point somewhere under the VGA chip. I also tested the LCD+cable on another Acer and it works fine. Could re-balling the chip solve the problem? If it can, I'll wait until I befriend someone that works in this area, because this computer is not being used but I could keep it as a backup in case I need it.
check ram first.. if it doesnt fix it. then try external monitor.. still has line= reflow ati chip careful they tend to pop solder from top edge of chip.. so dont over heat it too long
Thanks for the help. RAM has passed the Memtest86 twice. I didn't try an external monitor, probably it will not work because I can't install the ATi drivers, but I'll try it anyway. The problem was most certainly caused by too much gaming and overheating. I asked about reballing because if I decide to fix it, I would like it to be a permanent solution. I can leave it as it is for now, it's only used for net surfing and nothing else.
keep heatsink clean. try plug in vga mon first before power up.. also look at Fn key with F5 ? one to activate dual monitors