When I move or lift up my laptop video on the screen becomes garbled and everything freezes. The laptop works fine as long as it stays on the desk but when I lift it up video goes bad and cursor freezes. After that I have to do a hard reboot.
Today I had to troubleshoot a laptop with similar problem.
The laptop was working fine on my bench.
I have problem with my screen flickering a rainbow of colors even when I was at the Windows bootup logo. But when i using a video output everything is fine. Any Idea?
I have a Compaq Presario V3000 Series Notebook PC.
The external video works fine, so your problem is not software related. I don’t think it’s motherboard or video card related problem either, otherwise you would get garbled video on the external monitor.
As soon as I boot up the laptop, there is a one inch wide white bar running from top to bottom in the middle of the screen. It stays all over from the bootup till I switch off my laptop.
Please let me know how I need to proceed to get this problem resolved. Is it a problem with LCD or some video cable. I have a Toshiba P35 Satellite 17″ laptop.
I’m pretty sure your problem is related to the LCD screen and is not related to the video cable.
If your laptop looks like that, you’ll have to replace the LCD screen. You can buy a new LCD screen for your Toshiba Satellite P35 laptop here.
I have a HP pavilion dv8000. I love my laptop. I have an intermittent problem with my display. Sometimes the picture is fine but, at times the screen is garbled with vertical lines that are multicolor fading to gray. If I apply pressure to the back of the screen the lines would go away, now it’s very hard to make them go away. I will move the screen up and down until I find a good spot, I have to hold that spot until I am done. When I let go the lines come back. I am in no way a PC tech person but, I think that I can make this repair myself.
If you do not feel comfortable taking apart your laptop, I would suggest taking it to the service center. You can damage the laptop if you decide to open it up yourself.
Here’s how I troubleshoot laptops with similar problems.
I have a Inspiron 9400/E1705 with a nvidia geforce go 7800, when i start the system (DELL logo) appears green vertical lines through all lcd display, when i tried to test the 3D the display die and then a blue screen say the hardware is something wrong and the driver, i’m not sure if the card is bad, because it works for a time and then failed, i tried to reinstall O.S.(windowsXP) and drivers and it works for a while and then fail so now i have uninstalled the nvidia driver when i started windows the display is good with no lines but poor resolution due to video card is uninstalled.
If you see vertical lines as soon as you turn on the laptop and they run through the Dell logo, most likely this is a hardware related problem and this problem is not related to the operating system or the video card driver.
Test your laptop with an external monitor. Attach the monitor to the laptop, turn on the laptop and press Fn+F8 to switch the video signal to the external screen. If you see the same green vertical lines on the external monitor, most likely you have a problem with the video card.
I just bought an older laptop, a Dell Inspiron 5100, from a friend and about a month later, i came back to find that only the top 1/3 of the screen work. The bottom 2/3 is gray with vertical lines. i put the start menu on the side and it makes the bad part turn a light color of gray. Is there anyway to fix this?
I think this is the screen problem, but… Try reconnecting the video cable, it’s possible that the video cable is not making a good connection with the motherboard. Lift up the keyboard as it shown in the service manual for Inspiron 5100, unplug the video cable from the motherboard and then plug it back in.
If reconnecting the cable will not help, you can try replacing the cable. There is a chance and it shouldn’t be very expensive.
Finally, replace the LCD screen. In my opinion, this problem is related to the LCD screen.
My Toshiba Satellite L25-SP151’s screen started to flicker all of a sudden, going from a brilliant and perfect image to a dimmed, contrastless one, and strangely split in two zones: a bottom horizontal zone, with about 1/4 of the total screen area in height, which shows whiter than the top zone if there is a color image showing (like the one of the Desktop) or darker if there is a white background, like when using Notepad, for instance. When the screen gets like this, both zones are perfectly delimited and show no variation in size, although the bottom zone shows active ripping lines on and off very rapidly.
The screen remains in either state, normal or abnormal, for long periods of time, until it changes from one to another; that’s when the flickering starts rapidly until it finally settles in one state at random.
I opened the screen frame and tried reseating the connections that I found accessible in there, like those at both ends of the small horizontal circuit package located at the lower part of the screen compartment, but without favorable results.
I also tried an external monitor, and the image is excellent and totally stable at all times, although I was not able to verify if the LCD screen failed during the test, since it turns off automatically when using the external monitor.
What could be the cause of this behavior? I’d appreciate very much any comments or suggestions to this problem of mine. Thank you very much in advance, and warm greetings from Mexico.
You said that the external monitor has excellent image so most likely this problem is not related to the motherboard or the video card. I think the problem is somewhere inside the display assembly, most likely you have a faulty LCD screen.
When image on the laptop LCD goes bad, can you get it back to normal by touching, twisting or torquing the screen? If you can, probably you have a bad screen.
Try reseating the video cable connection on the back of the LCD screen, not on the inverter board (small horizontal circuit package) as you did before. In some cases you can get distorted video because of bad connection between the video cable and the LCD screen.
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.
I have a 1 year old Dell M170 and it has vertical stripes on the laptop LCD screen but the external always works fine. I can sometimes get it to work by closing and opening. Running diagnostics, it failed to detect the LCD inverter and I get: “error accessing LCD inverter” and code. When I look up the code with Dell they say it’s either the cable, LCD inverter or motherboard but nothing about the LCD itself being bad.
I have no idea how the inverter board can cause this problem. LCD inverter acts like a power supply for the backlight bulb, it converts low voltage DC power into high voltage AC power. When the inverter board goes bad you lose the backlight but to the best of my knowledge a failed inverter board cannot cause vertical stripes on the screen.
Motherboard problem? Possible but I doubt it because the external monitor works fine. When you have a faulty video card the same defect usually appears on both internal LCD and external monitor.
Sometimes you can get it to work by closing and opening the display. When you open or close the display you flexing the video cable. It’s possible the vertical stripes appear because of a loose connection somewhere inside the display assembly. You can try this. Open up the display assembly and reseat the video cable on the back of the LCD screen. It’s also possible that there is a loose connection between the video cable and the motherboard/video card, reseat this connection too. If reconnecting the video cable doesn’t help, I would try replacing the video cable.
If replacing the video cable doesn’t help, I would assume you have a faulty LCD screen.
Here’s a related post that shows some laptop LCD screen failures.
The owner of this notebook had a following complaint.
The notebook starts normally, but after a few minutes the image on the LCD screen washes out and colorful vertical stripes appear on the screen.
I connected the notebook to an external monitor and powered it up. The notebook booted to the desktop without any problems but after about five minutes the image on the screen started slowly fading out and at the same time colorful vertical stripes fading in. The external monitor was working perfectly fine, as it shown on the image below.
The image on the notebook screen appeared again after I slightly torqued the screen and washed out after 5 seconds.
If you have a problem like this, you have a bad LCD screen. I ordered a new screen for my customer.