Recently, my 16 year old IBM ThinkPad 570 has been developing an issue with artifacting on the LCD display (small dots randomly flickering, etc.), yet the external VGA looks fine... I've been running memtest86 from a floppy and so far I haven't seen any errors relating to main system RAM (unsure if this laptop uses shared VRAM), I'd hate to give this laptop up

Anyone know of a similar program for use with video memory? Want to test that before I get rid of this machine

Well, it seems like the problem was intermittent as I let the ThinkPad run for a couple days and it seems like it disappeared (I did the classic "hold down power switch for a minute or so" trick to dissipate the ESD, and it worked You never know with those old machines, there *was* a lightning strike nearby a few weeks ago and that might have messed up something)

Never rule out things like nearby lightning strikes or similar as causing a computer issue (but always remove the battery/AC plug before holding down the power switch )