Think my laptop died, any hope in fixing it?

B

bubbagumper6

New Member
I've got an Alienware M9700 that's going on 4 years old now. I've been having problems with he monitor backlight flickering (I think the cable is pinched somewhere) well this morning the monitor just turned completely off. Usually if it's the backlight acting up I can just wiggle the monitor and it comes back on, but not this time. I restarted it and it shows the bios & windows loading screens but it has some weird lines all over and just goes completely black after the windows screen. I went into my bios settings and it seems I can stay in there for as long as I want without the monitor shutting off but I still have the weird lines on my screen. Pic below...any ideas?

0323011335.jpg
 
Looks like your graphics chip has decided to die or it could be the video driver corrupt.

Boot into safe mode with networking and update the video driver.

If it continues to do these symptoms after the update you may as well get your data off and save for a new one :)
 
The backlight and the screen/video output do not actually interact with eachother at all, so you're looking at two different problems here. The backlight could either be the inverter or backlight itself, and the video problem you're seeing could be the video card, the LCD cable, or the LCD itself. Plugging into an external monitor should be able to rule out a video card problem.
 
Ok I have updates...I'm a 4th year electrical engineering student so I decided to tinker with the laptop and see what I could do.

I guess I should mention that I booted into safe mode and uninstalled both graphics drivers. This actually allowed me to boot into windows normally...however I still had the lines on the boot screens.

My comp is running DUAL 7900 GS graphics cards so I decided to pull them both out. Apparently I don't have any onboard graphics on my motherboard because the computer would NOT boot without either of the cards in.

So then I put one of the cards back in and booted, no change.

So I swapped the card out for the other one and booted, no change. Meaning it can't really be either of the cards themselves unless they both went bad at the same time in the exact same way...

So I put them both back in, buttoned it up and booted. I haven't installed any kind of driver so right now it's running whatever driver windows decided to use (Device Manager says they're both "Video Controller (VGA Compatible)".

It looked fine in the basic 800x600 resolution but when I turn it up a bit I get this:

57569986.jpg
 
Given that it does not appear to be a graphics card problem I would say that the LCD itself is the most likely culprit.
 
Really? I was thinking more along the lines of the mobo. It's just weird that at the lowest resolution the picture looks normal, but when I turn it up I get those lines...


I should add that I already bought an Asus N73SV-A1 last night as a replacement so fixing the Alienware only benefits how much I can get for it when I sell it...
 
While I wouldn't say it's impossible, I've never known a motherboard to cause graphical artifacts. Did you try an external monitor like I originally suggested? If it is something other than the LCD or LCD cable it should show up on an external display.
 
bubbagumper6 said:
Easier said then done, I'm not sure where that seats on the mobo...
Click to expand...
top right (maybe left) corner of the motherboard.
But what I was talking about was removing the cable from the rear of the LCD itself and reinserting it. You will need to unmount the LCD to do so.
 
I've taken the monitor apart before so that's no problem, but like I said, I don't know where it seats on the mobo side.

However as a little update, I just got home from class, fired it up and there's no artifacts anywhere...bios & windows screens looked normal. So I can't even really test anything at this point because the problem has gone away...An intermittent problem is seriously one of the worst things to try and fix, you never know if what you did fixed it or if it just fixed itself :mad:


EDIT: Ok at some point in the last 10 minutes it started doing it again...looks like I'll disassemble the monitor tonight to reseat the cable and see what happens >_>
 
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Reseated the monitor's cable AT BOTH ENDS and it's still doing it...

EDIT: Also I can't really test an external monitor because I'd have to install the graphics drivers to be able to do that (and the screen just goes black when I have the drivers installed)
 
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external VGA works with the included microsoft drivers. thats how you need to test. (done it several times while installing windows to laptops.)
 
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