Thinkpads Forum

So I woke up this morning and this is what my laptop screen looks like. It'll boot just fine into windows, but it's all garbled. Fortunetly I can use a external monitor, but thoughts on things to try?

I've tried, uninstall the drivers and reinstalling, rebooting, shutting down ... downloading new drivers ...thoughts on if it's hardware or not?

http://www.steudel.org/crash.jpg

Admin note: Warning: link is to a 4.5MB photo

Also is it possible to buy a new video card from Lenovo and replace it yourself?

Do you have warranty?

No it ran out a year a go. ...

Frankly, I prefer my Thinkpads baked, not fried (too greasy!) .

It appears from the error messages on the display that your system has experienced a bad disk error. However, the scrambled display is also a concern. What is the full seven character TYPE number of your system?

sadly, I'd wager your motherboard has gone bad, or at least a component (or many) on that board has failed.

Of which not much you can do on your end to fix this, that is unless desoldering/soldering small chips onto a laptop motherboard is your specialty.

However if you have another T60 laying around, you could swap LCD panels with another machine to help figure out if the LCD panel has gone out or if it's the Motherboard/Planar card.

And no, you cannot buy a new video card for your laptop, that part is soldered on the motherboard already.

Also, on that screenshot, I think the hard disc errors are Windows doing a scandisk check (probably from an improper Windows shut down)

Yeah that was from me hard powering the machine down ... I've seen motherboards on the ebay being sold, any thoughts on getting them and installing?

The full model num is 7662CTO

Mark

Okay, TYPE 7662 appears to have an nVidia Quadro NVS 140M video system. I would download the PC Doctor for DOS diagnostic:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-67910

There should be a series of video tests in that program. The problem could be related to the video chip on the motherboard or it could be in the ribbon cable to the LCD, or the LCD itself.

If the external monitor works OK, but the LCD is garbled, then I think the motherboard is ok. It could be a corrupt display driver or bad LCD, ribbon cable, or cable connection.

I suggest booting up a Linux Live CD and see how your display looks with that. The only problem with that is that some Linux CD's do not always have workable video drivers. Try booting up Rescue and Recovery (F11 at boot), and run video diagnostics from there. If you do not have Rescue and Recovery installed, try diagnostics from the PC Doctor for DOS bootable CD - ThinkPad.

I ran the pc doctor from windows (withthe external monitor attached) and the video card passed. So if its the cable what's the likely hood that I can fix it?

ok so how do you get the lcd bind head caps off, just pry them out with a knife? or do they twist or something? The screen actually worked after I took the lcd screen off for a bit and then reattached it. I also jiggled the connection into the lcd monitor. But then it stopped working again. Someone else suggested it could be the inverter, not sure how to test that ... thoughts?

The inverter only supplies voltage to the backlight. That is not your problem.

Do you get this garbled screen when you go into the BIOS? If not, I would try re-loading windows. You may have a hardware problem but you definitely have a software problem.

sktn77a wrote:You may have a hardware problem but you definitely have a software problem.

My bet he has a hardware problem, not software related (as already stated, it's either the lcd panel, lcd cable or MB). Or I've never seen a software fix to correct a jumbled image on the screen.

Guessing you don't have a stash of extra parts laying around (most home users don't), so that isn't going to help any. But you really can't test out the LCD cable unless you take apart the LCD panel completely, and swap out the cable.

sktn77a wrote:Do you get this garbled screen when you go into the BIOS? If not, I would try re-loading windows. You may have a hardware problem but you definitely have a software problem.

Yes I do get it when in bios

Your GPU is toast. The fact that the machine works well on an external monitor means next to nothing, since the video card has separate outputs for LCD (digital) and external monitor (analog) and one can work while the other one doesn't.

I'm sad to say that you're looking at motherboard replacement.

Good luck.