T42 Screen boots to black

Message

Tilyou · #1 Post by **Tilyou** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 12:14 pm

My T42 thinkpad has a screen problem -- I'm 99.92% positive the machine is doing everything else (booting, going into and out of hibernation, and shutting down) normally, but the screen is blank, dead black, so I can't be sure. To be more specific it starts normally:

-- first the IBM splash screen

-- then the Windows splash screen

It goes black the way it should, but I never see the next step where it goes gray (well, backlit black) and the cursor appears. But I believe it's actually working because:

1. when going into hibernation, it shows the usual screen (progress bar and all).

2. when emerging from hibernation, it shows the usual screens:

-- first the boot screen with F1 and F12 choices,

-- then the advice F8 gives other options

3. F8 after hibernation gives the chance to delete restoration data and proceed to system boot menu

4. I can access the F1 BIOS screen fine.

5. I can access the whatever it's called PC Doctor utilities invoked by the blue Access IBM button (and the video and Ram etc. check out).

I have tried "previous settings that worked". I haven't tried yet using an external screen.

Not long before this problem started I tried to update the ATI drivers, but that may not be the cause (the update seemed to work okay).

I don't have a floppy drive to boot from. In theory I could make a boot CD using Nero and my fallback (x23) machine, but I'm not sure how that will help.

Any suggestions?

Charles

-----------------------------------
She is not dead but sleeping....
or suffering a virus or bad video chip or

chan_man · #2 Post by **chan_man** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 12:31 pm

did you try pressing Fn-F7 to scroll through the display mode? the thinkpad may be trying to output through the VGA port and not to the LCD.

Tilyou · #3 Post by **Tilyou** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 12:42 pm

chan_man wrote:did you try pressing Fn-F7 to scroll through the display mode? the thinkpad may be trying to output through the VGA port and not to the LCD.

Yes, thanks, I eventually thought of that.

It turns the screen from black to gray (backlit black), but doesn't bring the image back on. Not a success, but maybe diagnostically relevant. Fn+F3 also didn't help.

Charles

JHEM · #4 Post by **JHEM** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 12:49 pm

Try BOOTing into SAFE mode, report back.

Sounds to me like your ATI drivers or display settings are scrambled.

Regards,

James

chan_man · #5 Post by **chan_man** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 12:55 pm

If it turned to grey from back when you press Fn-F7, then the Thinkpad was trying to go out on VGA. Can you plug in an external monitor to see what is happening there?

Tilyou · #6 Post by **Tilyou** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 1:45 pm

chan_man wrote:If it turned to grey from back when you press Fn-F7, then the Thinkpad was trying to go out on VGA. Can you plug in an external monitor to see what is happening there?

All these suggestions are appreciated! And we are thinking along similar lines -- I just tried that. Unfortunately, bad news:

1. Using an external monitor didn't work. The monitor was receiving a signal -- the monitor light toggled from green to amber when I toggled Fn-F7 on the Thinkpad, and when the monitor was active the monitor showed what the Thinkpad showed (the IBM splash screen, Windows splash start up screen, and the entry and exit screens for hibernation). But the monitor stays black all the times the Thinkpad stays black.

2. I used F8 to boot to VGA (640 x 480 mode). That booted in the same defective way it's been booting ordinarily (no change).

3. I tried an F8 Safe Boot as JHEM suggested. It gets as far as

c:\windows\system32\drivers\agp440.sys

and then the screen no longer changes. The hard drive spins away merrily, probably completing start-up, but the screen doesn't change. The hard drive spun for ages.

When if finally stopped I tried Fn+F12 to put it into Hibernation, but the screen didin't change (it still showed the scroll of system file lines that ended with agp440.sys) so I just pulled the battery and the plug to shut it down. That'll show it. (perhaps hibernation is not available in safe mode).

I am getting good at shutting down -- using control+escape to get the Start Menu, then "U" for trn-off and another "U".

Charles

JHEM · #7 Post by **JHEM** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 2:11 pm

Check the button for the lid switch. It's immediately to the right of the left hinge on the keyboard surround. Make sure it's working freely and not stuck in some way.

Report back.

Regards,

James

chan_man · #8 Post by **chan_man** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 3:44 pm

Tilyou wrote:[
1. Using an external monitor didn't work. The monitor was receiving a signal -- the monitor light toggled from green to amber when I toggled Fn-F7 on the Thinkpad,

When you attached the external monitor, was this from a powered down state? Can you do a cold boot with the monitor attached? not from hibernation. With the LCD screen closed (assuming you have a dock or port rep) the external montor should be the default so no Fn-F7 is needed.

From what your wrote so far, sounds like the video driver is messed up. If you have a spare HDD, you can try reinstalling the operating system from either your backups or from the recovery CDs...

Tilyou · #9 Post by **Tilyou** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 4:34 pm

Thanks, James, for your continued attention. In the interim, I pulled out the hard drive, and used it externally to get all the info that wasn't backed up.

I also used the opportunity to try to fool with a screen driver called agp440.sys which is the last line on my screen before safe mode fails, and which a number of posts (elsewhere) have reported has led to screen problems. I tried deleting it from windows\System32 and also tried replacing it with an earlier version, but no soap. And yet except for the screen problems, the computer continues to run perfectly -- boot, hibernation, exit hibernation, shut down (all done blindly with keyboard commands).

JHEM wrote:Check the button for the lid switch. It's immediately to the right of the left hinge on the keyboard surround. Make sure it's working freely and not stuck in some way.

Yes, I see the button you mean. It appears to be free. At those moments when the screen is working (the splash IBM and splash Windows during start up) I could depress the button by hand and black out the screen, and release it and the screen was instantly back. The button seems free and easy -- probably not the problems, especially since the points when the screen blacks out are so consistent and unrelated to screen movement.

Charles

Tilyou · #10 Post by **Tilyou** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 4:51 pm

I think you mean start the laptop from a cold boot with the external monitor already plugged in. Hmm. I may not have done that. I'm not terribly optimistic though. Consider that I could toggle Fn+F7, and that affected whether the external screen got a signal, just as it should. The problem is when the laptop screen was black, so was the monitor, and visa versa -- I could only tell the monitor was still receving a signal by seeing the monitor "on" light change from green to amber.

From what your wrote so far, sounds like the video driver is messed up. If you have a spare HDD, you can try reinstalling the operating system from either your backups or from the recovery CDs...

I agree that should be the next step.

Or even easier -- find some place that would either let me put my t42 hard drive in THERE T42, or that would take my T42 and put in their hard drive.

In other words, is the problem the hard drive or the computer?

And if it's the computer, am I screwed? I am hoping in that event I could buy a stripped down refurbished version (no hard drive, no RAM, no battery, no DVD) because all those things work on the T42 I have now).

Charles

Tilyou · #11 Post by **Tilyou** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 7:01 pm

chan_man wrote:From what your wrote so far, sounds like the video driver is messed up. If you have a spare HDD, you can try reinstalling the operating system from either your backups or from the recovery CDs...

I don't have a spare HDD but I do have a Windows XP installation CD, and I can try the Recovery Console or its bootfix function.

But if the problem is hardware, perhaps the "Recovery" will do more harm than good.

Anyone have experience with recovery?

Charles

#12 Post by **carbon_unit** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 8:21 pm

Did you try F8 and "Last known good configuration"?

Tilyou · #13 Post by **Tilyou** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 8:27 pm

carbon_unit wrote:Did you try F8 and "Last known good configuration"?

Yep.

And also F8 and the boot to VGA option.

Safe mode too.

All no soap.

Charles

Tilyou · #14 Post by **Tilyou** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 4:53 am

JHEM wrote:Check the button for the lid switch. It's immediately to the right of the left hinge on the keyboard surround. Make sure it's working freely and not stuck in some way.

Report back.

Regards,

James

AHA ! MAJOR CLUE....

In a private email someone suggested that I boot from KNOPPIX a Linux "live CD" (no hard drive needed, so it won't mess the HDD up).

And it booted ! Faster than WinXP boots from the hard drive.

This implies to me I have a software problem, no?

Windows recovery console looks like the way to go, although I will wait for comments.

Charles

#15 Post by **carbon_unit** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 6:06 am

If it is a software problem you can spend a bunch of time troubleshooting it or you can save your data and use F11 at boot to restore windows (if you still have the restore partition) or a windows cd to reinstall windows. Then put your data back on.

Tilyou · #16 Post by **Tilyou** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 7:41 am

carbon_unit wrote:If it is a software problem you can spend a bunch of time troubleshooting it or you can save your data and use F11 at boot to restore windows (if you still have the restore partition) or a windows cd to reinstall windows. Then put your data back on.

Nah -- no need for anything that drastic, which would require an incredibly time consuming reinstallation and upgrading of every piece of software and data.

Instead I used the Windows CD "repair" function.

New problem: the CD's serial number doesn't match the one on the Thinkpad, so Microsoft won't activate it automatically, and I can't get into my machine. Eerrk! But it appears to be working underneath...

Charles

T42 Screen boots to black

T42 Screen boots to black

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