Just a quick one – recently bought a new laptop and it worked fine for 3 weeks and then suddenly started throwing out VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE errors with a mention of the Nvidia driver. There were no detectable Windows or driver updates between it working and not working. I went through EVERY suggestion online for fixing it – reinstalling drivers, DDU, BIOS updates, fresh Windows install, upgrade to Windows 11, memory diagnostics, the lot. To test I was running benchmarking software such as Unigine, Furmark, OCCT, etc. and it would crap out about 10s in with the same error message. Ultimately the supplier has agreed to a RMA.

However, I switched it on last night to do some boring work (i.e. not requiring the Nvidia GPU) and thought I’d give it a test and everything is working fine. All benchmarks worked, managed to get an hour of Fortnite in with my eldest, a lengthy Furmark GPU stress test went without hitch.

So…. has anyone else suffered this issue? What’s the likelihood this was just a random bit of dust, or dislodged chip that’s now sorted itself? Should I carry on with the return? It’s a pretty beefy laptop that I got at a significant reduction so I’m almost certain they’ll just refund rather than replacing like-for-like.</span>

Maybe it was on offer as it had a known problem and the supplier you bought it from got tired of doing RMAs on it?  No advice on the issue though, occasionally stuff does clear itself but it’s impossible to know.

I’d be concerned it was a hardware issue. If so I wouldn’t want to risk keeping it.

Has it got the correct power supply with it (voltage AND wattage?). Perhaps as you did some other work first it had a chance to warm up, and top off the battery charge before you started working it.

Hardware

RMA it. Sounds like a hardware fault.

Has it got the correct power supply with it (voltage AND wattage?)

That’s a decent shout. I’m at a remote site with work and we’re running on gas-powered generators. Not even sure if we’re 110v or 220v. I thought the power bricks sorted all that out automagically though?

Will check with the power generation guys anyway.

I might be missing something, but shirley the laptop works off the battery with the power supply topping that up? Mine is plugged in but only charges when it needs to (it says)
You might have covered this, but have a look for “View Optional Updates” on the Windows Updates window; these aren’t automatically downloaded

I meant the charger itself, we used to have issues at work where people would mix and match same brand chargers from smaller laptops with larger ones, or use their laptop charger to power the laptop dock and everything plugged into it instead of the larger one that came with the dock.

It’s only really likely if it was a previous return or display model, if it was brand new with security seals you would like to think it’s got the correct power brick with it.

I think you are correct that most chargers will accept both 120v and 240v input.

Checked with the power guy, we’re on a very stable 220v. The charger is the one that came in the box so I’m assuming that’s good.

The GPU is some fancy RTX thing with a significant power draw so only really gets used when it’s plugged in. Otherwise it reverts to the onboard graphics.

I’ll give it a week but I think probably better safe than sorry and I’ll be sending it back.

Thanks all.

I’d definitely RMA it, my new work i7 wouldn’t enable bluetooth and i had troubleshooted to the point of involving Dell. Dell sent out an engineer to replace MOBO. Replaced no difference, long story short that laptop had 2 MOBO’s and then developed another fault.

I complained so much that they agreed to swap the device out with a like for like, no issues at all since. Definitely RMA as it may be fine now but if it develops another fault then you’d wish you had

Ultimately the supplier has agreed to a RMA.

So there is no longer a problem.

Yeh just RMA it.
But do bear in mind things like fur mark and OCCT are super stressful.. Not the kinda thing you should be running on a laptop, despite it being a ‘gaming laptop’ there’s just no such thing… They just don’t have the cooling capacity of a regular size pc with a bunch of 120mm or 140mm fans to help you out