Thinkpads Forum

T40 is happy in the IBM mini-dock, with a small external monitor - been running a dual display setup for a couple years. WinXP Pro, ATI video card. I haven't changed anything (that I know of).

Suddenly the T40 display is no longer there. No backlight - nothing - just off.

Powering down then undocking the T40 and rebooting produces a blank display at first, but after fn[F7] a few times, the display comes up - has a bluish tinge to it at first, then it's fully on and fine.

Power down, re-dock, reboot, and back to where I started - no laptop display, but the remote works fine. The video card thinks there are two displays working, but for some reason the laptop display is off.

Question: is this likely a mechanical/electrical connector issue (with the docking connector)? Or is there some weird key combination that I inadventantly hit that toggled my laptop monitor off?

Any help appreciated. Thanks!

Further to above - went through troubleshooting dialogue within the display driver, and ended up searching for an driver update. The one I had was 2003 and it updated it to 2005. Installed, rebooted. Both displays came back to life - showing the same thing - when I got to the Win logon screen. So I logged on and left for a few minutes. When I got back I was right back where I started - remote monitor working fine, TP40 display dead.

So it would appear to be a software/setting problem - not an electro/mechanical one.

So how to reset the ATI Mobility 7500 display card back to factory settings? Maybe do an uninstall? Will try that next and see what happens.