Problem solved!! S3 chip failure?

[Msmax]

EDIT:

Today I repaired a dead T23 MB and swapped it with the one which had this video failure problem reusing the exchangable parts.

I was very surprised to discover that the new repaired main board had the same VGA problem as the old one. I suspected there was something else failing.

I replaced the CPU and powerd up the notebook... surprise surprise: I have now XP booting perfectly. Tried the old main board with a new CPU and even this combination works flawlessly.
Now I have 2 working T23 main boards!

Conclusion: the CPU was the reason for this VGA trouble.

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Just bought a T23 notebook which does not load XP.

If started then everything seems to be fine until the graphics screen of XP has to be loaded. The display is black and stays that way... no harddisk activity anymore (harddisk is known to be good).

Did run the PC Doctor diagnostics and found:
S3 2D Engine test: FAILED
S3 3D Engine test: FAILED
S3 Multimedia test: FAILED

Does this mean I need to replace the mainboard?
I suspect the S3 chip is history, any other idea's?

Regards, Msmax

[RealBlackStuff]

Try it with an external monitor hooked up.
You could also try to start in Safe Mode or VGA only.
Press F8 repeatedly on boot up to get this start menu..
Perhaps they had the resolution set too high for the LCD.
If you have an XGA screen, then max. 1024x768, if SXGA, max. 1400x1050.

[rkawakami]

I've never received a failing result from any of the video diagnostics on my T23s. I'd say that if PC Doctor is flagging those tests then the problem is either with the S3 video chip or its associated memory. Either way the problem is on the motherboard and may be hard (if not impossible) to fix. Could be a simple issue with a bad connection (re-flow the solder) or a bad component (S3 or memory).

[SMA]

I have not seen anything like it, but giving it a guess, I would say that it might be a software issue.
If the S3 chip has not been initialized properly, its behaviour might well be the one observed here.

To avoid getting into a too complicated explanation, I will just try to give some suggestions as what to try.

Remove any miniPCI card and if connected to a docking station then disconnect from it and try to boot up.
No need to disconnect from a port replicator, should the machine be attached to one such.

Try a bios update. It does not matter what bios version you will be updating to, as long as it is different from the one already reported as being in there. It can be a bios downgrade as well, the important thing is to get the bios rewritten.
What I am suspecting, is that a previous bios update might have failed.

[phool@round]

snip: The display is black and stays that way... no harddisk activity anymore (harddisk is known to be good).
Did run the PC Doctor diagnostics and found:
S3 2D Engine test: FAILED
S3 3D Engine test: FAILED
S3 Multimedia test: FAILED

Unless anyone has had a video chip fail they would not be familiar with the symptoms. I've had a video chip fail and the results I had are the same. Try flexing your system (push up directly under your video chip) and see if that momentarily causes a change. A better way of checking is to lift the keyboard and put your thumb right on the chip and push down with a bit of pressure while the laptop is one and see if the screen does anything. It probably will still be frozen but you may get it to fire up the screen. In either case that will tell you that the chip has a bad solder connection.

[Msmax]

Problem solved. See my first post.

Msmax