PCI Express error in Qosmio G45 AV-680 laptop

[Suu!Shant]

I have a Qosmio G45 AV-680 laptop. It’s working properly till last month. But from the last one month I face a problem of following type:-when I try to turn on the indicator disk is lit and extinguished 2 seconds. After that it displays screensaver of Qosmio. Then black screen comes out to the middle with the white text “PCI Express Error”. There is no response from any keys on the keyboard except F2. When I press the F2 key while that screen saver, then the bottom of the menu appears select the drive to boot. If you try to press Enter key immediately after that then you will see the above error message. If I try to restart the PC then everything is repeated in a loop again and again. Once I change the setting of BIOS also but I fail to solve the problem. Sometime the cooler noise and light of HD drive is off. Please can anyone help me out.

[Shreevats]

As you mentioned in your problem I can sort out some things that causes this type of problem. I think it is a driver or hardware failure problem. I think you have tried to start your laptop without any external devices hooked up to it am I right? If you have the problems related to driver then try to use recovery disks or you restore your computer system to its last good configuration. That will help you to correct your problem (this only possible if the problem is driver related). If this solution does not work then the problem’s reason is that some components of your laptop has failed and it needs to be replaced. If your system is in the warranty then it’s very easy to fix this problem. Try to check out the damaged or corrupted components and replaced those with new and branded components. This will definitely fix your problem. I hope this will work for you. Thank you.

[Ronchi]

According to your description I can make out that the problem is a PCI Express error. As you mentioned your laptop displays a error message of “PCI Express Error” on your screen then the possibility is that one of the mini PC cards which are plugged into the motherboard has failed that is why it creating an error, but this problem can also found due to fault in motherboard itself ,which is also causes some different problems also. For solving this problem you can try this trick, open up the unit try to unplug any mini PCI device that may be there and then try to start your computer without those component and you will see it can then boot to windows. check the working of operating system is there any problem or not. The PCI Express error is generally causes due some hardware problem like motherboard etc. so check out tjose components and try to replace them. I think this will help you to solve your problem.

[Dwarner]

Before solving these type of problem you should know about the mini PCI devices. Here I am giving you some information about that. Mini PCI devices are small cards that plug into small sockets on the motherboard. These are usually held in place by the by two small screws. Usually they are found in WI-FI devices or that kind of other devices. It can be an extension of the PCI bus used in portable computers. those parts are designed for peripherals such as modems and network adapters Mini PCI cards are credit-card sized modules which can be snap onto the motherboard. they cannot be inserted into slots like PCMCIA cards (PC Cards). Mini PCI allows high-speed transfer peripheral connections in small form factor devices such as laptop computers, by using the standard PCI signaling that is found in PCI-based desktop computers.. Mini PCI was added to PCI version 2.2 for use in laptops, it uses a 32-bit, 33-MHz bus with powered connections (3.3 V only; 5V is limited to 100mA) and support for bus mastering and DMA. By the use of this information you can understand your systems problem and it will help you solve your problem.

[Author]

I also have same problem from last 3-4 months. I have toshiba Qosmio G45 690 and I also faced the problem of PCI EXPRESS ERROR as mentioned in your question. I try to find the solution on various forums and I found that the culprit is the Nvidia's VGA card (NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT). Then I called my local Toshiba repair service because I lost my warranty one year ago. But then also I can’t solve the problem. The engineers said that this is not a known issue so they cannot do anything for that and they told me “you should go to service centre of the company”. So I am trying to replace my Nvidia cards to solve my problem. By the use of "disassembly manuals" I was able to strip my qosmio down to the motherboard and found that the card is integrated. I don’t know whether it is possible to remove current VGA card and and replace it with the new one or not. There is one guy in a Taiwan who can give me the replacement components(this information also get from various forum). I hope this will worth for you. Thank you.

[Vandam]

The problem can be found due to use of the GT8600 one of the faulty chips. They also include , 8600, 8400, 7150, 7100, 7000, 6150, 6500 etc. According to a lawsuit which has been filled by Nvidia's own insurance company, NUFI, Toshiba are named as one of the OEM's to have received compensation from Nvidia for the defective Nvidia chips. So you can acknowledged this problem to Toshiba and dealt with it. To confirm the problem is of motherboard or not then there is the only way to know for sure is to perform a rework test on the GPU. This involves heating up the GPU for about a minute with a tool similar to a hot air gun. Once this has been done if the laptop displays correctly then that is evidence of the inherent defectiveness of your laptop. I think this will make you comfortable to solve your problem.