W500 Fullscreen games blackscreen - ATI issue?

[Medessec]

So-I've got this W500 that I'm putting together for my friend. It's working beautifully, and seems to have been equipped with a WUXGA 1920x1200 screen at some point in it's life, straying from it's original intended equipment(4061-2ZU) other than that, it's 100% original.

I've got Windows working on it, however with some fullscreen games, it shows a black screen and plays the audio, never initializing the video. This happens in particular with Call of Duty World at War(this needs to run, my friend loves the game).

Attaching a second screen and running it on there fixes it, and running it in windowed mode on the LCD panel works as well. But whenever it runs on the panel, with all settings left alone, it fullscreens then just shows black.

I've been up for the past 3 hours running into dead-ends with updating drivers, people blaming the chipset and switching graphics(I currently have that turned off and I have it locked onto the ATI chip in the BIOS) and installing only the Thinkpad driver... or a certain version of this and that... can you guys help? Is it the panel? Is it just a flaw with the V5700? I might swap the 1280x800 panel from a T500 I have here to see if that does anything...

[ajkula66]

Have you tried lowering the resolution before starting the game?

[Medessec]

Tried that- still no dollar.

New development, the problem is "fixed" by attaching a second screen, running the game on the second screen, switching it to Windowed then dragging the game to the main panel, then switching the game to fullscreen settings. The game will load the fullscreen setting and work perfectly fine, and exiting the game and reentering it, it works as intended, regardless of what resolution the W500 is running at, or the resolution the game is set to.

The issue only occurs for 3D games that the W500 hasn't played yet, every game I've introduced the fix to has continued to start up fine even after multiple Windows restarts, and new games the W500 hasn't yet launched will blackscreen until the fix is applied.

I'll do some more experimenting... to see if it's a fullscreen resolution or configuration(16-bit color, 50 Hz, etc.) the ATI chip or panel doesn't like. But I'm leaning more towards it being a software issue of some sort... or some problem with the switchable graphics. I may do a fresh install to see if that changes anything.

[ilakast]

Long shot but nothing to lose: run all the DirectX diagnostics and see if they pass successfully.

[precip9]

It's an old, unmaintained driver. But try the driver Kitor tried:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 76#p722576

It didn't get him to Windows 8.1, but it might solve your problem. There is also a 13.4 beta on the same page.

[Medessec]

I've tried both drivers, they don't fix the issue.

However-I've now got Lenovo Power Management on the machine, and turned switchable graphics back on. Switching it to Intel graphics works much like doing the fix with a second screen-all I have to do is alter the graphics profile, and it works with ATI indefinitely.

I've also updated the BIOS, if I neglected to mention that. I think it's a problem specifically with this W500... dunno if it's the hardware. Hopefully not. But I'll try swapping the screen with my T500 to see if that does anything.

[Medessec]

Update:

The panel was the problem. Swapping in a 1280x800 panel from a T500 I had on hand fixed the issue completely, regardless of the driver installed.

So... is there some chip somewhere or ID piece that interfaces the panel with the ATI chip, that isn't working properly or isn't configured for a WUXGA panel?

[RealBlackStuff]

See if you can find any EDID info for that WUXGA screen, it probably came from a HP or Dell or whatever...
Download the spec sheets of the screens involved and compare them.
WXGA and WUXGA also might need a different LCD cable.