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[Christophe]

So many months ago before I left for a magical land of kilts and oatmeal, I had a nice lappy. However I couldn't take it with me because it was routinely doing shit like this:



to the point where it was basically not usable.

When I returned it was still kind of doing that but the external display still works so for now I'm using my laptop through an external screen. However when it starts up I notice that the laptop display would work regularly until it boots up and sends its video feed into the external monitor. I've only tried to use the laptop without the external once and it seemed to work, but when I tried turning it on again it reverted to the above so I plugged the external monitor back in.

When I still look at the monitor on my laptop it still seems to work regularly but I haven't tried using it with only that display. Can anyone tell me what the hell ass balls is wrong with it, if anything? I'm going on a trip to a student conference this weekend and I sure would like to have my laptop around with me, so I'm wondering if it'd be safe to take without the display gettin' all fucky.

[Dimmukane]

My first (and obvious, and only) suggestion (right now, anyways, it's late and I have to get up for work in 5 hours) is to check your drivers.  If they're outdated, install the new ones.  If they aren't, completely remove and re-install them.  The way you're wording it makes it seem like your laptop displays the POST stuff fine, but when it gets to the OS, it goes wonko.  Sometimes OS updates can cause conflicts with video drivers, although this seems a bit more bizarre than usual, and typically driver issues also appear on the external displays.  Either that, or it is strictly a hardware issue and something is messing with the connection between your GPU and your screen.  I'm led to believe that this is probably the case, but I unfortunately don't know how you'd go about fixing it other than taking it apart/to the shop or blowing in it a little.

[Jace]

I can't help you, but my aunt has that exact laptop. how strange.

[David_Dovey]

I am pretty sure they tend to make more than one of each type of laptop, doggo

[jhocking]

They've got a timeshare going on.

[Jimor]

Looks like somebody's arm got trapped inside the display during manufacturing. That tends to mess up the gonkulator circuitry.

[Chesire Cat]

Its consistently works while booting up and when it switches primary display to the external one? Or is it sketchy and only breaks sometimes, other times it works?

If its sketchy and inconsistent its probably hardware, a bad ribbon cable to be exact. If its consistent then its probably drivers or some other software cause. Or possible the video card itself.

[Christophe]

Ok, here's the skinny on what this thing does.

Usually, when I shut down this computer, I have to leave it plugged into the external monitor when I switch it back on. Otherwise it does the weird screen thingy. After that though, and I'm all logged in and stuff I can unplug the external monitor and use the laptop display, even if I close the lid or put it on hibernate. So it doesn't seem to be a driver issue; for me, "bad ribbon cable" seems to be the most plausible explanation. I'm pretty hesitant to open up the computer though; I'm quite sure that doing that last year might have caused this issue (was trying to clean out a shitdick of dust that accumulated on the fan).

So basically I'd have to go to a computer repairman or something or send this thing in for repair to Compaq, neither of which I am enthused of doing.

[Christophe]

Bump to see if anyone can say anything about this before I try re-setting the cables or asking a techie or whatever