My screen is white and has lines of color running through it – thin ones, subtle and not too prominent
I left my laptop off for the past few days and it was only recently that I got to leaving it on for a whole day or two… I was in the midst of downloading something from the net so I decided to leave my laptop running while I went off to work. Some hours later (ten hours or so), I came to check up on my laptop to see if any of them has finished downloading and all I was left with was a white screen. The screen has lines of color running through it – thin ones, subtle and not too prominent. I panicked, and I shut it off, hoping that when it restarts, the windows screen would appear again. It wasn’t successful, needless to say, and I tried turning it on and off a couple more times before I finally freaked out. What I am now wondering is whether or not my hard drive fried and took away all my files, or whether or not this is just a mere screen problem. I have been reading about external monitors while browsing this segment, but I have no knowledge of such. Bottom line is – I want to be able to know whether or not my files are still recoverable… and can my screen problem be fixed? It’s Toshiba Satellite M30-UU9.
Without testing the laptop with an external monitor it’s impossible to find out what is wrong. Find an external monitor, hook it up to the VGA port on the side or your laptop and turn the laptop on. If external video will not appear try using Fn+F5 key combination (for Toshibas) to switch video from the internal screen to the external. You’ll have to find out if the external monitor displays a white screen too or it works properly.
If the white screen appears only on the laptop LCD and external video works fine, most likely you have a problem with the LCD or video cable.
If the white screen appears on both LCD and external monitor, then you have a problem with the video card (I believe it’s integrated into the system board). You’ll have to replace the system board in this case.
I think there is nothing wrong with your data on the hard drive. If you need to access your data ASAP, you can do this.
1. Purchase an external USB enclosure for notebook hard drives
2. Remove the hard drive from the laptop
3. Insert the hard drive into the USB enclosure
4. Connect this enclosure to any working computer via an USB port. The hard drive should be detected automatically. Now you can access and retrieve all needed files.
February 23rd, 2007 at 9:54 am
Hello,
I turned on my Gateway 7422GX last week and the screen appeared bright white. I then connected the notebook to a Pc monitor on which I could only see the initial Windows Page (Black with a blue progress bar) That disappeared but the HD light on the notebook was still blinking. I tried Safe Mode and was able to load and see Windows from the Pc Monitor. I tried updating the video card driver but nothing changed. So I tried backing up my data on an external drive using windows backup but the program aborted mentioning something about “Catastrophic Failure”. I copied the most important files on the external hard drive and proceeded to a full system restore. After this step I was able to load and visualize windows normally but only from my Pc monitor. So I deduced that the video card wasn’t the problem and I looked to see if the video cable and LCD cable behind the screen were well connected. I disconnected and reconnected them but the problem persists. Is there any way to find out if the screen needs to be replaced or if the problem is somewhere between the notebook and the screen?
February 26th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Tancred de Grazia,
It’s impossible to guess until you test the laptop with a known good LCD screen. I think it your case it could be either a bad screen or something is wrong with the video card.
One guy had exactly the same problem with his Sony notebook, take a look at comment 12. He had a white LCD screen but video on the external monitor worked fine. He replaced LCD, video harness ans even inverter board, but still has the same problem.
March 1st, 2007 at 10:52 am
Mine decided to fail a few months ago. My wife was playing the Sims 2 when all of a sudden the white stripes appeared. They seemed to radiate from the cursor.
Upon restarting, the screen was full of stripes which distorted the underlying text. And I’m talking about the text from the boot screen, not even Windows.
I booted it up with Ubuntu LiveCD on Gnome and the screen became legible again. Then back to Windows and no prob. I haven’t tried to run 3D apps anymore. A month ago it gave me the same stripes and they vanished again under Ubuntu, but this time it took more (about a week of use).
I’m sure in my case It’s the video memory. I don’t have an external monitor at hand, nor do I want to test 3D again and risk disabling my video permanently unless I get to know of a way to replace the video memory chips, which are below the DVD-RW.
I’ve got another PC, with a Radeon Xpress 200m video which is not as good as the 9550. Still, it can handle some games till I build my desktop.
March 10th, 2007 at 9:29 am
My hard drive went out in my pavilion ze5300 laptop. I bought another hard drive and reinstalled windows xp (had to use an external monitor). It installed perfectly but my LCD has a white screen. I then proceeded to restore my whole system with my restore cds that came with the laptop but still have a white screen. I’m hoping it’s just my LCD and not my motherboard. If anybody has any ideas then please post them. I would appreciate it.
March 13th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Brucie 2,
I hope it’s just a loose connection and not your motherboard or LCD (both parts are extremely expensive). I think you might have a loose video cable, check connections on both ends – on motherboard and LCD screen. If it will not help, probably you have a bad LCD because the laptop works with an external monitor.
July 31st, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Hello everyone and thanks for your responses. I decided to buy a used screen (to minimize expenses if my hunch proved wrong)on ebay. I was able to dismount the Gateway’s screen and replace it with the one that was delivered(it took me 3 days). The problem was, indeed, the LCD screen as it now works fine. the articles on this site helped immensely towards disassembling my laptop. And I hope that this will help others with the same problem.
August 15th, 2007 at 11:28 am
A few days ago, my family and I decided to take from Louisiana to Georgia. We took my Acer Aspire 1640 because I wanted to continuously check my bank account, so it rode in the main part of the car. When we returned home, I instantly got onto my laptop because there were some files I wanted to check and didn’t depend on Wi-Fi to keep it to it’s self. Well, thirty minutes into usage, thin whit lines started to take over the screen then flash back to the original screen. after doing this once or twice the screen would turn completely white then freeze. What do you think is wrong?
August 28th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Hello,
My problem is similar to these but still different. My xps m1330 has been recently freezing up and trying to restart only to run into a Blue error screen that quickly flashes and then the process restarts. When i manually turn off the machine it will usually start up to an all white screen that will gradually as the minutes pass attain vertical multicolored lines. The only changes ive made have been getting an external hd which is hardly ever plugged in. The problem has been happening more and more frequently. System restore temporarilly alleviates the problems. Could this problem be fixed if i completly reformated my computer or is it an internal hardware problem?
November 20th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Hi,
I have a quite similar problem with my dell 8600 inspiron. I was just using my laptop, went to eat dinner and came back after 15 minutes and my lcd screen is all white with vertical multicolored thin lines on it. I tried rebooting the system several times, but to no avail. I tried hooking up the laptop to an external monitor but it won’t work.
I was able to buy an external casing for my IDE drive because all of my important documents, pictures and home videos are in my drive. I do have an external drive, but I am so dumb that I don’t back up my data all the time. The problem is, I can view all the folders in the hard drive, even the ones for the other users like my sons, but I can’t view my own folder. It says access denied. I figure, since my log in was password protected, my folder will not be accessible to everyone. But how do I bypass that and able to view the content of my folder. I have already tried changing the security and sharing feature of that folder but to no avail. The funny thing is, when I right click on my son’s folder and go to properties, it would show how much data is in there, ex. 50mb. But when I look at my own folder, it would show 0mb. But when I look at the whole drive, it shows that it has around 32 gigs of data in it. Please help! What do I do. I really need those documents in there.
Thanks so much for any info you guys can extend.
May 21st, 2009 at 1:36 pm
i have exact same problem like Benjamin 2 post above, both of my laptop are dell xps m 1330, with vista, and all updated patches. this started automatically from 19th may, 2009. before that they were working perfectly since almost a year, anyone has any solutions?
suddenly on screen we see complete white background with vertical thin color bands which starts fading to complete white, all i can do is hard shutdown.
looks like some bad patch. both has nvidia gforce 8400M GS graphics card.
December 18th, 2009 at 5:36 am
I have an identical problem with my 42″ Samsung LCD TV. I have no idea what caused it, but it only appeared when I turned it on after thieves attempted to rip it off the wall mount while robbing my house. Can a jarring or sharp jolt like that cause internal damage to an LCD’s components (the type of damage that would result in that type of screen malfunction)?