Thinkpad display "flashes" with external monitor

[jmeissen]

I have a recent (04/07) Z61p that I otherwise love. But it has one annoying "feature" that is driving me crazy.

I spend half my time at a remote office, where I have a nice 24" 1920x1200 monitor I attach as a 2nd display. Whenever this monitor is attached something causes the screen to appear to flash at regular intervals. It ONLY happens when I have an external monitor attached.

I've closed all running applications and patiently watched the display. What's happening is something displays a window that occupies most of the display, but it only lasts for something like one refresh period. I can just make out the window outline and a bunch of text before it quickly disappears. It doesn't persist long enough to actually read any of the text. It happens at about 2 minute intervals (2:45 to be exact). It's incredibly annoying.

This didn't happen with my last laptop, (from Asus) so I'm 99% certain it's NOT something to do with XP. The only significant differences between the two systems are all the pre-installed Lenovo software and the AV software (I was using Avast before, the IT guys installed Symantec on this system). And this is an ATI graphics controller where the other laptop was nVidia.

I've been slowly turning off the Lenovo crap one at a time trying to isolate it, but without much success. I'm almost to the point of uninstalling everything that has "Thinkpad" or "Lenovo" in the name and trying to get the system back to a clean XP-Pro system, but I don't know what will break.

Any ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[gator]

Try turning off LCD refresh in ATI powerplay.

[jmeissen]

Try turning off LCD refresh in ATI powerplay.

The only refresh option I see is "3D Refresh Rate Override" under Display Options in the Catalyst Control Center. It's already disabled. Why would that cause a window with text to momentarily appear?

I've seen this after logging in from a clean power-off boot, where the only things running were services, etc. that are configured to run at boot-time. Very frustrating.

john-

[FrankSchwab]

I have the same problem on my T60, except mine blinks at a very regular 4 minute 30 second interval. I've tried two different external LCD monitors, I've reinstalled XP (with the Lenovo drivers, of course), and yet still it blinks.

We're using Trend Micro's AV software here, so that's different from yours also.

For me, it doesn't look like a new window popping up - what it looks like is a split-second resolution change. Text momentarily gets stretched, then snaps back. And, when this occurs, both screens are affected (the external and the laptop).

[GomJabbar]

See this thread from the T60 Series forum.

Docked dual display video issue

[FrankSchwab]

Why, thank you GomJabbar. The symptoms sound exactly the same.

I'll try the suspend thing, see if I can make the problem go away. Any suggestions on how to apply pressure to Lenovo to get a fix in for this?

/frank