Graphics card problem?

Jackovarian

Hey guys, hoping somebody out there can help me with this little problem.

My laptop screen comes up white when the lappy's turned on, no garbled messages or anything, just white, and when it gets to the windows entry screen, where you pick the user, lines come on the screen, either vertical or horizontal. although these fade.

the screen ribbon has seen better days although i know a new screen and ribbon have been tried on it and it wouldnt work them either.

It will run an external monitor and can play games n such no problem, so if its the gfx card it must just be a connection error? am i correct?

the screen brightness buttons still work so it couldnt be the inverter.
has anybody any ideas???

Barlow07

Jackovarian wrote: »

Hey guys, hoping somebody out there can help me with this little problem.

My laptop screen comes up white when the lappy's turned on, no garbled messages or anything, just white

It could be the Graphics card, have you checked your device manager for any signs of a problems under Network adapters?

Did you download or update any Java software today as well?

Jackovarian

nope. windows wasnt loaded on it when i got it and the screen didnt work then either. i have since loaded windows and everything works fine, no conflicts that i can tell of anyways. The cards runs caesar4 perfectly. its a ati x700 with 128dedicted ram. ive inspected it and the resistors around it but they all seem perfect, no burnt bits r that, no sign of solder problems either. obviously i didnt blow any parts looking around.

the screen ribbon is banjaxed, so maybe that is the problem, but it has been tested with a different screen and ribbon... so...

see, bought his off somebody as a fixer-upper, but its turning out to be a bit tougher than i thought.

Jackovarian

also, the external monitor has now stopped working! the laptop gets to the loading screen of windows, then turns off the monitor!

it was working fine until i updated the system time and date from 2004 to todays date! im guessing its a systems error whereby windows has had freak attack because it has jumped four years into the future, thereby shutting down the second monitor option and leaving the sole lcd display.


anybody help?

RoyalMarine

if the external display has stopped working while booting windows then id say its either a driver problem or a dodgy connection somewhere.

when you opened the laptop up, did you put everything back to the same place as it was? any damaged cables at all? any missing screw's?

Y2J_MUFC

I've seen a laptop with the exact same problem as you described. What was wrong with that one, was the graphics card had overheated and basically cooked itself. It was a GeForce..not sure of the model. The new graphics card sorted it out

Strange that it worked on an external display though.

Jackovarian

well, yes there are missing screws, not my fault though... it came like that. theres one or two mobo screws missing. but theres at least one in there grounding the mobo to the shell...

it worked the external fine, except for now!

I just heard that the previous owner did a bios update when he had it coz the external monitor stopped working aswell, this fixed it.

but, heres the tricky part, when he had the laptop the lcd wouldnt light up, yet it would show the display and he could use it with a homemade backlight, thsi was before he started using an external monitor for it. now, the backlight works fine, but no display.

im wondering if, in between then and now, if the bios update messed around with anything?

it couldnt be windows drivers as the problems occours from startup, not from windows startup.

Jackovarian

also i noticed that my processor dropped from 1.6ghz to 800mhz on xp, before it stopped working on the external. although i think this mite have been an in-built power saver thing.