R60 screen periodically dies?

[supernovastarfish]

Hi there

I run Fedora 11 on my 3 yr old thinkpad R60 and it's been happening for a few weeks now.
the laptop screen will suddenly, for no reason at all (ie, fans and programs still running), black out. if i move the cursor, the images return.

it's not serious but it's quite annoying, especially when it happens 2-3 times every hour.
any ideas of what the problem is?

[ZaZ]

It comes back if you reboot? Maybe you can hook up an external screen to see that works. That would tell you if it's the screen or mothernoard/GPU, though if it's still running I'd think that would tend rule out the later Perhaps the cable is loose. It don't cost nothing to re-seat it.

[Harryc]

If all you are doing is to move the mouse/cursor and the LCD image returns, then that sounds like a screensaver, a timer, or power management kicking in to me. Try a live CD from another distro as a test. Does it still occur?

[supernovastarfish]

If all you are doing is to move the mouse/cursor and the LCD image returns, then that sounds like a screensaver, a timer, or power management kicking in to me. Try a live CD from another distro as a test. Does it still occur?

unfortunately i can't do that. my laptop has suddenly automatically shut down and now it's dead.
it's hooked up to the power adapter. initially, i pressed the on/off button and but it dies as soon as it reached the thinkpad screen.

i've tried holding the power button for a minute to get rid of any residual but now it won't even respond to anything i do. the only symbol that is lit up is the power adapter one.

did something blow?

[Harryc]

Remove the hard and media drives, battery and unplug the adapter. Press the "power" button ten times in a row, holding it down for ten seconds each time, and thirty seconds the last time around. Plug the adapter back and try to power on. If it still fails, remove the RAM and tell us if the system beeps.