Aspire 940m driver problems

Mr_MagicMan · January 27, 2020

I picked up an Acer aspire with an i5-5200u, 8gb ddr3 and a 940m, for 80$. Still a deal even with the broken gpu in it.

I have reflowed directing the heat to the whole gpu chip and the ddr3 ram chips, multiple times, I do not think that the vram is dead rather there is a driver issue. Once there is a small amount being pulled all hell goes loose in the same fashion where there is a bios/driver issue on those fake gpu's from wish and stuff. There are random shapes on the screen just as they would be. I don't think I can find a good driver for it since that is leading me to believe that there is something wrong with the vram, and/or a driver since this is the more uncommon 4gb model.

Are there any sort of different or more special drivers that I could use, or a very out of date one that would work with this model, This is the 4gb version not the 2gb one that you cant find anymore.

This is leading me to believe that there is just a basic driver issue since the person that owned it before me (I bought this second hand) did not notice anything wrong going on, he said he stopped using it and about a year ago it started to artifact and all of that.

There was a nvidia forum or on toms hardware where it was mentioned that there was a windows 10 update that caused all of these driver things and stuff to happen, which might be why windows is auto installing the wrong driver and whatnot.

I have already ddu'ed multiple times trying on the latest driver, and older one which the driver installer did say that there was something wrong or different about the hardware and that it couldn't install.

I for somereason cannot run a vram test since all of the different programs that I used either did not select the right gpu( the integrated stuff or the 940m) or it would just crash.

Actually after typing all of this up rnrn this is making me think that he sold it cheap because he may have done a bios update or windows tried to or something like that and then started causing problems.

Once again, I have reflowed the vram and gpu multiple times with no avail, the vram solder joints even look a lot better and more clearer than the cloudy garbage that they looked like before.

Should I use flux while reflowing too? maybe there is actually a problem with one of the solder joints?

Im kinda in a loop at this point, if any1 has ever dealt with the 940m and has had a similar issue please give me all of the infromation that you can.

While typing up more of that this is actually making me think that there is actually nothing wrong the gpu, it never crashes on a stress test and the vram is actually, well obviously casuing a big problem with it since it is doind the same thing with the fake gpus with the wrong bios installed and is casuing all of those shapes since windows is reading the hardware and fiding 4gb of vram and then it would be installing the right rivers because in device manager is will only find the right amount of vram with a driver installed. I think this is only happening with the driver installed too since it is reding the wrong bios and is installing or making the wrong driver install and is causing the issues because it is reading the wrong hardware

Is there even a way to flash a notebooks discreet gpu, I CAN tell if anything is using the gpu or when it is inactive and whatnot from the nvidia control pannel.

Should I try to sell this for more than I bought it for but idk if I really should or can, I assumed there was nothing wrong with the laptop and it was just overheating but there is actually and problem with it. I know im a dumbass.

Can I flash its bios I should try to do that since that does have a history of fixing things for like a week. I even fucking wiped my ssd to see if that one creators update was causing the issue. the bessel around the keyboard is scrated and bended up probably from the previous owner getting into it, lmao there are 12 screws missing from the fucking bottom too. enough to keep it together tho.

ok more things I just installed the driver to get the artifacting garbage sow I can show you what it is doing. and it was working just fine until I restarted the computer, legit frfr, like do you normally have to restart to get the drivers to work? Before when I installled the driver it wouldn't work right after and just start artifacting, but i like worked until I restarted windows. like wtf how does this work rn plz I need help

This is my first gpu that is acting like this I really need to know if you can reflash a mobile gpu's bios, or will I have to flash the whole computers bios since it is a laptop.

anything will really help plz respond if you have any ideas or infromation.