unusual? T61 screen turns on and off

[mkitten]

I have a series of video issues with my new T61+NVidia Quadro NVS 140M+Vista. I just reinstalled Vista and all the updates but it didn't solve it.

Often when I reboot or come back from hibernation, after I passed the Vista password gate, screen turns off for a fraction of a second every 2 seconds, with a bip, non stop. I have to delete the monitor driver and reboot.

Other constant problem I suspect is linked: I have a Dell 2405 monitor with 1920*1200. The image in high res is one quarter to one third away from the center. This forces me to choose 1600*1200 which is well centered but becomes automatically the highest possible resolution until I reboot.

I cannot change the driver (it appears as a generic non PnP). It tells me I have the latest one.

Is that something you have already seen?

[truk]

I would recommend downloading the latest drivers off the web and installing them. If you are trying to use a generic Vista driver, it may be causing your issue.

[mkitten]

thanks truk, I think I have all the drivers up to date, with both system update and windows update on.
I have recently got the nvidia driver updated (7.15.11.7431) to no avail. The previous ones were not better. It would be strange that I need to go back several generations of drivers, wouldn't it?

[truk]

Yah, I don't think it's a driver issue. It sounds like it could be hardware. I'd start contacting Lenovo support to see if they can do anything. If your dedicated video RAM is faulty, I believe it could cause an issue like what you are having (then again, I'm NOT an expert.) You might want to see if it does the same with a Linux Live-CD. If it does that would strongly suggest, almost confirm, a hardware malfunction.

[mkitten]

will try. But I am surprised this can effect the monitor plug'n'play and the centering of the display only with the top resolution and on only one monitor (which works fine with another laptop).
I'd like to know if someone has ever experienced the same symptoms

[mkitten]

Back after two weeks of nightmare installing and reinstalling.

It's most likely to be software: I reinstalled the factory Vista and installed XP in dual boot. Not only XP works perfectly fine (at least for graphics) but the new Vista install shows all the same video problems, starting during the install, with no improvement after the latest Microsoft and Lenovo updates of the NVIDIA.

The screen flickers with sounds similar to plugging/unplugging a USB component, the high definition of the external monitors disappears after a while, with one external monitor showing off-centered image. When coming back from hibernation, screen is often black. Anything you recognise? I am desperate