Howdy!
Well, for one, don’t ever buy a laptop or desktop from [CyberPower PC dot Com](www. cyberpowerpc. com) [sub]link works, just take out the spaces in the URL. [/sub]. These guys are a joke–the first time my problem happened, they held my laptop for two months. Second time, they sent it back and it didn’t work out of the box. . . but that’s neither here nor there.
The problem: My laptop computer works great–it’s just the onboard LCD screen doesn’t function on bootup. This is a random occurrence, and has happened frequently in the past, to the point I almost never shut down my laptop anymore; I leave it running all the time. I’ll restart the laptop or it’ll hibernate, and then poof, nuthin’.
I just restarted my laptop which was working fine, and now I’ve got nothing. No BIOS screen, no ‘Windows Loading’ screen, nuthin’. But an monitor plugged into the side works fine!. I can read, post, do whatever with an external monitor, it’s just that I can’t use the onboard monitor. The onboard camera works–but not the screen.
Anyone seen this before?!?
Tripler
This message composed from my Apple IIe.
Look on your function keys for a little monitor icon, or the letters LCD/CRT. Most laptops have a 3-position switch for monitor options; built-in monitor only, eternal monitor only, or both. On IBM Thinkpads, you hold down FN while pressing F7 to cycle through the choices, but other manufacturers assign it to F6 or F8 or something else.
A few computers have a more complex setup which requires messing with your Display Settings.
The damnedest thing: On a whim, I fire up the laptop this morning, and now the screen works fine (I’m posting from the ‘troubled’ laptop now!). I didn’t change a thing. I unplugged the battery and the AC adapter for 10 minutes or so last night, and then plugged both back in just before bed. Now it works like a champ.
What the hell?!? I didn’t change any settings or anything. Boyo, I even found the switch button (F3 on mine) and hit it a couple of times, and found it stayed on “LCD Only”–although I haven’t tried that yet with an external monitor plugged into the side.
Yeah, this laptop is screwy. Too bad my 1-year warranty expired just under a month ago. . . :smack: Anyone got any ideas?
Tripler
What I fear is that I’ll have this thing on the road, away from my other monitor, and this happens. . . :eek:
It’s pretty clearly an intermittent hardware fault. It’s going to be in the screen itself, the video chipset, or the connections between them. If you can find online instructions on how to open up the main part and to detach the screen you may be able to jiggle some connections, but if it’s a bad component there’s no easy fix; you could speculate on buying a replacement screen but there’s no guarantee that’s where the problem is.
As you boot up most laptops, there is an “autodetect” function for new hardware, including an external monitor/projector, and that may be what is screwed up. It may be detecting a monitor that isn’t there, and routing it’s video output accordingly. Though usually, when you fire up a computer with an attached, powered up monitor, the default is to send the signal the both internal and external monitors.
Try this again the next time the onboard screen fails. Remember, hold down the Fn key while pressing F3.
And I forgot to mention, it may take several seconds for the computer to resond to this command, so you should hold down both keys for 3-5 seconds.
If this doesn’t work, I got nothin’.