Black screen at boot on T61 but start normally

[ricp]

Hi,

on my T61 (7664-1FG) nvidia quadro nvs 140M the lcd screen suddenly turned black as I had a second monitor connected.

What's happening is very strange, the computer boots up normally except the laptop lcd remains black. On the external monitor, no bios enter prompt or thinkpad logo either. Finally, the windows logon screen appears on the external monitor but the screen laptop remains black.

Seems that a bios setting is locked (LCD Display?) as i have noticed that somehow, sometimes, the nvidia control pannel seems to change this setting when you have multiple dispalys.

When I clone displays, the laptop screen blink without image, making me think the screen is not dead. The nvidia control pannel detetcts the screen but when i clone displays I can't make it to the full normal resolution which is 1440 x 900

The problem is, even if i can enter the bios, i can do nothing as i can see nothing at boot on boths screens....

Any Ideas on this ? Thanks,

Richard

[Harryc]

I'd guess that you have a defective GPU on your systemboard. It is a common failure with nVidia based T61's.

[ricp]

Thank you for your reply !

Luckily i decided to renew my 3 years guarantee who was expiring a week ago. Perfect timing: guarantee expire, laptop stop working. Great !

Anyway to be sure of this without gettint it to repair and replacing the motherboard ? (as i suppose the chipset is integrated in it..). I ran video test with pc-doctor... nothing unusual.

[Harryc]

Well, Thinkpad PC-Doctor diagnostics can be run.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-56222

Or of you have problems with that due to your display issues, try this -
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-73783