Lower portion of screen is light green.

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nicmic · #1 Post by **nicmic** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 8:25 am

Hi,

Not sure if this belongs here or in the General Hardware forum.

An old R31 has developed a display problem. The lower portion (roughly one third) of the screen is showing as light-green. The cursor moves as normal in the top area but hits treacle when it enters the green area - HDD activity picks-up at that point, as well, and continues for a minute or so.

The task bar is not visible, although the whole green area behaves like the <Start> button, in that clicking within it brings up the Start menu. I've had a second monitor connected for some time before this problem arose and this still works.

On start-up, the "Welcome" screen shows as normal - no green band at that point, but it appears with the desktop and it takes about 10 minutes before the startup disk activity stops.

I would be happy to use the secondary as the primary, but selecting "Use this device as the primary monitor" removes it as the secondary and the primary display is reset to 640 * 480 (from 1280 * 1024).

I suspect this is a driver issue but thought I would check before I start floundering around. Any ideas gratefully received.

TIA

#2 Post by **RealBlackStuff** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 9:59 am

Welcome to our Forum.

Sounds indeed like a graphics driver isssue.
Other things to test: check the LCD cable (LCD and output-VGA are not the same part of the graphics hardware). Your inverter might be dodgy.
And check for perhaps a virus!

nicmic · #3 Post by **nicmic** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 5:12 pm

Thanks RealBlackStuff - re-installed the drivers (vftp1f2k.exe from LenovoSupport, saved from the first time I used it 6 months ago) but no improvement. Just finished running a full (AVG) virus scan and nothing of any note was found (just the usual harmless trackers).

I assume your advice re LCD cable involves a screwdriver? Never taken a laptop apart before, just desktops - isn't that a job for a jeweller?

Will the inverter be obviously dodgy? Will it read "retrevni"?

nicmic · #4 Post by **nicmic** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 4:41 am

I just realised the significance of what happened after I reinstalled the drivers: on boot-up both primary and secondary monitors were showing the desktop and the green area was present on both. Does this shed any more light on things?

#5 Post by **RealBlackStuff** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 7:16 am

Can you put the R31 TYPE in your signature (do this in your Profile)?
That will make it easier for us to see the specs of your machine.

Play around a bit with the Fn-F7 combination.

If you go to this page, and change the "Quick path" product-number to your R31-type, you will find all sorts of info on your model, including the Hardware Maintenance Guide (under User's Guides and Manuals). With this illustrated doc you can take your R31 apart. All you need is a small Phillips screwdriver.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... ry=26474MU

nicmic · #6 Post by **nicmic** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 1:44 pm

It's become very apparent that the green area is, effectively, an exploded <Start> button, without the "Start" label. It changes to a lighter shade of green when I move the mouse over it (but the mouse slows) and the "Click here to begin" tooltip text appears. Clicking brings-up the Start menu.

The T60 is my main laptop. The R31 (the one with the problem) is only the lounge PC, used for TV/radio watch/listen again and the odd Google that we can't be bothered to go upstairs to do (my son mockingly refers to it as the "multi-media centre" as he passes en-route to his electronic jungle) so this is not that big an issue, but I want to fix it rather than buy a replacement.

I'm removing some Windows Updates that I installed a day or so before the problem started to see if that helps – I know that’s a long shot. Then I’ll try doing a windows repair with the original install CD (I wiped and rebuilt it when it got superseded by the T60).

In the meantime, if anyone has any ideas…

PS
Never used the Fn+ xxx keys – I suppose it wouldn’t work on the R31 due to rebuild? On T60, Fn+F7 has no effect – Fn+F4 does bring-up the closedown window. Fn+Home, etc. seem to work, however. No matter – I got the info by checking underneath each machine.

PPS
RealBlackStuff: thanks - I'll try the hardware route as a final resort.

SMA · #7 Post by **SMA** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 5:28 pm

Can be a memory problem.
R31 uses shared memory. That is, the memory used for the screen is part of the sdram physically located on the ram modules.
Does BIOS see all the memory installed? How much memory has BIOS set aside for VGA memory?
Has memory been removed from this machine recently?
If memory is down to 64 MB or less then that would explain the long start up time.

#8 Post by **RealBlackStuff** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 8:05 am

nicmic wrote:It's become very apparent that the green area is, effectively, an exploded <Start> button, without the "Start" label. It changes to a lighter shade of green when I move the mouse over it (but the mouse slows) and the "Click here to begin" tooltip text appears. Clicking brings-up the Start menu.

If that is indeed the Start button (or the Taskbar perhaps), hover the mouse pointer over the top-line of the green area, until the cursor changes to a line with arrows pointung both up and down.
Leftclick the mouse and 'drag' that line down to where it belongs (taskbar height). Any better?

nicmic · #9 Post by **nicmic** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:12 am

Removing SP3 (which took forever - I just left it running overnight) has fixed the problem. Odd, because I installed it weeks ago and the system has been in daily use since then (and been rebooted a few times).

My Computer --> Properties shows 248MB of memory which should be enough. Odd that it's not 256MB?

SMA: do you think increasing memory would help? I could buy 512MB from from Crucial, and replace one of the 128 modules giving me 640, I think?

RealBlackStuff: good idea, but I always lock the task bar so that wouldn't have worked. On reboot after the SP3 removal, the task bar was the height of the green area - I just unlocked it and dragged it back down.

Before all this started, I'd ordered a wide-screen monitor - that's just arrived, but no manual or drivers (cheap offer from Dabs) so I'll have to hunt those down.

Thanks to all who responded.

#10 Post by **RealBlackStuff** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 12:48 pm

XP can not run properly on only 256MB.
You need at least 512MB, better would be your suggested 640MB or even 1GB.

nicmic · #11 Post by **nicmic** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 4:23 pm

Been fairly usable with 248MB (even when I used it for real work) but I wonder if SP3 was the final straw.

I now have a problem with a wide-screen monitor on the R31, but I'll ask that in the General forum.

Perhaps it's time to retire the T60 from active service.

Thanks again to all.

SMA · #12 Post by **SMA** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 5:27 pm

When I mentioned memory, my only concern was whether or not all memory was recognized by bios.
I just wanted you to check that area - there could have been a hardware error there. I am glad it wasn't so.

Whether or not you should buy more memory is up to you. There are far to many variables there for me to judge whether or not
that will turn out to be a god investment.

The reason why the amount of memory is being reported as being 248 MB is that the remaining 8 MB is allocated to the screen.

Lower portion of screen is light green.

Lower portion of screen is light green.

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