[Harmonica]

Hello, I'm in bit of a dilemma right now. It's making my internet practically unusable right now.

I have a 5 year old laptop (old, I know) that has been running pretty good up till now with a few minor mishaps. It's an HP DV6 with Windows 7.

The other day my laptop decided to overheat a bit. Now this isn't usually the way it overheats, because the fan only made a high pitched sound for only a second or two, then stopped. After that, my internet started running slowly and pictures stopped loading.

I restarted my computer because usually that fixes internet problems, and when the computer rebooted I got a screen saying the computer overheated. Usually when it overheats, it'll shut down itself, not continue running. I also have a laptop cooling pad underneath it so usually I have no problems.

I was still having internet problems so I tried system restore twice but when the computer rebooted I got a notice saying system restore failed. Of course.

I know this isn't an internet problem since I have the same problems anywhere I go, such as college or at my home.

Both Firefox and Chrome do the same thing. Basically, no videos or flash images will load. Facebook won't load all the way, it'll only show the top search bar along with my picture so I can't see anything else and I can't post anything.



Tumblr's dashboard will either appear extremely scrambled, or pictures load as broken images.


Some images appear scrambled...in neon colors too...and look almost like a broken VCR tape.



Certain websites load fine and others not at all. Google doesn't work correctly, if I try to search something, it'll either freeze or go to a blank white page. I have to refresh or enter the search again multiple times in order to get it to work.

There is the constant "spinning circle of death" on most of my tabs in Chrome.

Videos won't load at all, they appear as a white or black screen. Certain buttons are unclickable (like flash or javascript ones)

Everything else other than this seem to be working fine, like all my software. Clearing cache or browsing history does nothing and usually makes things worse. Shutting down my computer and leaving it alone does nothing (I shut it down before I go to bed). I tried searching but could not find anything like this problem, plus Google doesn't want to work much.

ALSO: I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Chrome and now none of my browsers can download it. Safari says there's some SSL error, and Firefox just has it infinitely downloading and failing.

Edit: Nothing wants to download. I either get SSL errors (can't connect to server) or it says it's "corrupted."

Edited by Harmonica, 16 March 2014 - 02:37 PM.

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Anything HP DV**** has a horrible engineering issue when it comes to the GPU. These machines are notorious for overheating which causes the GPU to pop out of socket.

Yours is surely on its way.
These are soldered in BGA and I've seen them pop out part ways and still work with major issues or pop out all the way and power up for two seconds and power off.

The GPU requires a re-flow and that is only successful about 70% of the time.

The WISE HP engineers decided to put a rubber grommet in place of the usual thermal compound, and even a second grader knows that rubber doesn't transfer heat very well.

I think all the other issues could be malware if its not related to the issue I just described.

[Todd Evans]

Anything HP DV**** has a horrible engineering issue when it comes to the GPU. These machines are notorious for overheating which causes the GPU to pop out of socket.

Yours is surely on its way.
These are soldered in BGA and I've seen them pop out part ways and still work with major issues or pop out all the way and power up for two seconds and power off.

The GPU requires a re-flow and that is only successful about 70% of the time.

The WISE HP engineers decided to put a rubber grommet in place of the usual thermal compound, and even a second grader knows that rubber doesn't transfer heat very well.

I think all the other issues could be malware if its not related to the issue I just described.

[Harmonica]

I'm gonna take it to a technologist at my school tomorrow and see if he knows anything. I can't exactly find a solution to my problem online. I get a lot of SSL connection errors in all browsers so I think that might be an issue but I'm having a hard time understanding SSL certificates.

It might be malware. A friend of mine who tried to help me figured that might be the cause. I ran Windows Defender but didn't get anything, and my Norton is out of date.

Last resort would be to completely wipe the thing. System restore is always failing. If it's a virus, it sure doesn't want me to fix the problem.

I will be getting a new computer soon, and definitely not an HP or Dell. This thing is 5 years old and I'm surprised it's lasted this long. I was just hoping this would hold out until I graduate next month, then I could buy a new one after that.