Thinkpads Forum

Okay, it's not really a black image. The LCD is in fact turned off. This has been happening every several days (at the worst) or so for months now. I would be doing something, and BAM! The screen is off, the hard drive doesn't run, but the light indicators at the bottom of my LCD are still lit (wifi, bluetooth, that Z symbol?, battery, and plug -- all the icons are still on).

The only thing I can do is force a shut down with the power button. It has nothing to do with a specific program or action. It just happens unexpected with no warning.

Could it be my RAM? Or my 160GB Seagate SATA HDD?

What are your system temperatures? Install NHC or some similar program and let us know ... sounds like it might be a heat issue.

gator wrote:What are your system temperatures? Install NHC or some similar program and let us know ... sounds like it might be a heat issue.

Nope, definitely no heat issue. Ever since the more recent BIOS firmwares, my laptop runs relatively cool. I don't do anything that demands a lot of resources or CPU power. In fact, right now, my NHC says 45°C. It usually ranges from high 40s to low 60s.

Check up event viewer and see if there is anything funny going on. Are you using aftermarket RAM?

gator wrote:Check up event viewer and see if there is anything funny going on. Are you using aftermarket RAM?

What's event viewer? A log saver of sorts?

Yes, unfortunately, I do ues aftermarket RAM. A year ago I got an OCZ chip from NewEgg.

Go to Control Panel-->Adminstrative tools --> Event viewer and choose "System". See if you have any entries with a yellow exclamantion point or a red cross icon at the time of your crashes.

If you are using 2 memory sticks, I'd also suggest running you machine with just one (default one first, afternmarket next) and see if you can replicate the crashing problem. It might very well be a RAM mismatch issue ...

I've experienced similar crashes during the last couple of weeks. Screen goes black, no HDD activity.

In my case, it only occurs when I play a video with Media Player 10, but not every time and not always with the same video.

I think the problem must have started when I installed a new Firegl driver. I've reinstalled the old one, but that hasn't solved the problem. Reinstalling a HDD image from before the changes should fix this, I just haven't got around to that yet.

It's Radeon driver alright... My system locks only when I play videos and before every video the LCD does 3 short blackouts. Sometimes, it doesn't come back after a blackout and that's the exact same problem you're having. I thought it's a memory problem (not using IBM genuine), but I've ran memtest and GM and everything is ok...

if i recall correctly, the latest ati driver fixed something with acrobat reader, if that is what you doing

Dumb-[censored] Radeon driver! I've been playing Civ4 for some 4-5 hours or so - Perfect, no problems whatsoever! But when I try to open a video for, let's say 10-11th time, it dies on me.
I don't have to tell you that Civ4 is very, very memory hungry game, so it's not memory, it's not Direct3D, it's not overheating, it's something stupid with video codecs - maybe the driver doesn't like K-Lite (I think I've set ffdshow for everything)...

Since heat does not appear to be the problem maybe your GPU is just plain old failing.

I would call for service if warranty is available.

Brad

Same was happening for me on my T60p, maybe every 6th time I'd start a video. Power off and reboot, would happen again. Happened for months too it felt like. I re-installed an older video driver and uninstalled and reinstalled presentation director, and touch-wood, it hasn't happened for a couple of weeks...

It's powerplay issue! I set PowerPlay to Full performance while on AC power and things improved... not to the non blocking point, though, but improved. I think you all should take a look at the T60 "freeze" thread - at the last page there's a description of a Microsoft patch to be imported in the registry. I imported it and black screen hasn't came up since (3 days and counting).

gaphic2 wrote:I've experienced similar crashes during the last couple of weeks. Screen goes black, no HDD activity.

In my case, it only occurs when I play a video with Media Player 10, but not every time and not always with the same video.

I think the problem must have started when I installed a new Firegl driver. I've reinstalled the old one, but that hasn't solved the problem.

For what it's worth, I just experienced the identical problem on my T42 today. I recently replaced the motherboard as a GPU upgrade and so have switched from Radeon 9600 to FireGL drivers (Omega drivers latest release).

Hi, I just thought I would tell everyone that I also have the exact same problem. You're right about how its with videos. Sometimes when opening a folder that has movies in it, the sreen will flicker many times. You're also right about how if your in maximum performance mode, the flicker doesn't happen.
I thought it was funny how you call it the black screen of death, I gave it the same name. It's quite anoyying. The other thing thats dumb is how powerplay somehow keeps going to powersave when I have it set to max performance. The way top fix it is to open ATI CCC, and click apply. I'm waiting for an update or something to fi this.

I wonder if it has something to do with video overlay settings?

Thanks for everyone's input, but I fear that for me, it's not the GPU or video related. My 'blackout' can occur at any time with no warning.

In fact, it happened last night. I was just surfing the web, checking email, and BAM! The screen was out (but with backlight), and no HDD activity (even CAPS LOCK doesn't work).

I then, for the first time, pressed Fn + F7. Surprisingly, it rebooted the system. I'm not sure if it was because I pressed it, or the system was in the process of rebooting anyway. In past crashes, I normally force reset by holding the power button.

I'm having the same symptoms, it's relatively random, and like you said the screen is black but the back light is still on, but the machine is completely unresponsive.

So far it has happened:
1) Upon opening Outlook
2) Surfing the web (Firefox)
3) Video editing with Premiere Pro
4) Opening Media Player

Quite frustrating.

I had the same problem described in this thread, particularly when watching movies. I think it's related to the ATI video drivers from January 2008- I rolled them back, and I haven't had a "black screen of death" since.

To roll back your drivers, on Windows XP Professional, go to Device Manager->Display Adapters->ATI Mobility.... Right click on the ATI card, go to "Properties", then go to the Driver tab. Just click roll back, and you're done.

I have a T60p and was running Windows XP SP3. I was getting the black-screen freeze (no blue screen), as described above, and could only restart with a hard reboot. This happened about once a day, and usually in association with Windows Media Player (v. 10), but it would happen with other programs as well. I tried everything to solve the problem. including all of the solutions suggested above. I finally determined that the problem was due to two rogue dlls called gopher.dll and ahook.dll, which are loaded by Media Replay Catcher. MRC fails to unload these dlls when it closes. I found that I could get rid of the "black freeze" problem by instructing MRC to not attach to WMP (see advanced settings in MRC). I suspect that there are other dlls that may be causing this black freeze. Unfortunately there is no way to selectively unload dlls, which would help in troubleshooting the problem.

Tried rolling back video driver. Nope!!! It still does not work. I still get this error time to time. Very dissapointed. IBM should never sold the thinkpad division to chinks.

azpirin wrote:IBM should never sold the thinkpad division to chinks.

Hooray to racism and ignorance!