Thinkpad T40 graphics card may have been damaged by new Ubuntu

[reggyt]

Hi there,

Yesterday I installed the latest Ubuntu version on my old IBM Thinkpad T40. I had a spare harddrive so just did a fresh install. After initially all looking good, started to get system freezes that could only be sorted by powering of. After reading a few forums I switched of the extra dells and wistle provided by compiz and the freezes stopped. It did appear that the video driver the system install had defaulted was not ATI. Soon after seeing this started to get strange effects on the screen, which involved small horizontal line disruption giving a "fuzzy" effect. At this point I was worried, powered off, pulled the hardrive and put by windows HD backin. The problems is that I'm now stuck with the "fuzzy" screen spell, that come and go. I'm thinking now that some perminant damage has been done to my videocard. Would be greatful to hear if other have had similar issues ?

Cheers,

John.

[bumanie]

It is impossible for a filesystem/OS installation to damage a graphics card. It is more likely a problem with voltage supply to the gpu ie., psu not working correctly or that the gpu has overheated at some point and only shown a problem now. Possibly with the uninstalling and reinstalling of the hard drive, you inadvertently disturbed some other connectors - I have installed multiple operating systems on multiple computers and never has it caused a hardware failure - it is not possible for software to damage hardware (bar from the odd virus that may alter the software controller of a hardware device and get the device to operate in a manner it is not designed to). Hardware is damaged by incorrect voltages/current, too much heat or water/condensation or a combination of the above. Has there been an interruption to the power whilst plugged into a/c? This could cause a power surge that can damage components.