Has Vista SP2 Physically Killed my monitor?

[Paul666]

I have a newish Toshiba laptop, I installed sp2, it went though a 3 stage process and rebooted but all I had was a black screen. Tried f8 but still a black screen.

As I had played with the external monitor button I plugged an external monitor and had a display on that till it came to the login screen which was black. However there was no display on the internal display at any point.

I then f8 into safe mode tried to solve prob in various ways such as removeing sp2 but still no go. In the end I just uninstalled the graphics drives and I could login as normal - however there was no display on the internal monitor.

I then noticed that if I looked at the internal monitor very closely I can see the display (set up to mirror the external monitor) but the display is very very dark.

I don’t think this is a Vista sw problem as when I boot there is no post display on the internal monitor and I have it set in the bios to display on both mon.

It looks like vista sp has killed my backlight! Is this possible can anyone suggest and solutions?

I tried adjusting any brightness options I can find.

Thanks
Paul

 

[SapperGB]

very much doubt vista has physically damaged anything, Does your display work during POST?

 

[Paul666]

only on the external mon!

 

[davemackenzie]

Strange, the only things i can think of are that the backlight may have coincidentally died, or SP2 has fiddled the power settings to dim backlight to 0%

 

[Paul666]

Well I've got SP2 on OK now and looked at the brightness settings in control pannel and they are OK. But still no light on the internal mon but OK on the external one.

I just don't see how it could be Vista as I get no display on the internal mon at boot ie before Vista but do on the external mon. Yet its an amazing coincidence that the backlight goes at the same time SP2 is been installed.

Also have latest graphics drivers installed.

Any more ideas?

 

[Curly99]

What happens when you press the FN key+F5 ? I think that is the key combination to toggle display on a Toshiba. if not try FN+F4 or maybe FN+F8

 

[Paul666]

I get 4 display options:

1) Internal display only - when I select this dark internal mon and no external mon.

2) Clone mons - Get external mon OK but dark internal mon

3) External mon only - Works OK

4) Extended desktop - So desktop spread across both mons but internal is dark - this ones a pain as the internal mon is primary so all option to change the display are on the internal dark mon!

Thanx

 

[Curly99]

if the internal/laptop screen is too dark can you not calibrate or alter the brightness, contrast...etc through the graphics card options? or try Fn + F6 = Brightness down Fn + F7 = Brightness up

 

[Paul666]

Tried that no effect, I've even found out how to have extended desktop while keeping the external mon as my primary so I could alter brightness etc for each mon and for the internal mon no change.

Used cat ctrl pannel as its a ATI 3470 graphics chip.

As far as I can see f6/f7 have no effect def not on external mon and internal one stays dark even set to max with f7

Thanks

 

[MrShed]

To me the obvious question here is - can you see the backlight?? i.e. can you see the leakage around the edges of the screen?

If not - popped backlight, coinidentally with install (cant think of even a theoretical reason why a SP install would cause a physical display fault).

 

[Paul666]

No I don't so but there is some light I've noticed that when I pull the external monitor cable out there is a sort of brief very very faint increase in a milky light and then the screen drops back to beeen dark.

When I say increase I am not saying it looks correct just slightly less black.

Thanx

 

[Paul666]

Fixed it!

Gave Tosh tec suport a call:

Shut it down
Unplug mains
Remove Bat
Press the power key for min 10sec
Remove external mon
(I also removed net cable)
Plug Mins back in
Press Power
Sorted
Rember to shut down before replacing the batery

Apparently it can have something to do with a static build up if the you turn it on/off close together pos during a updade.

In my case I had a sp2 update followed by the sp2 black screen of death prob to which I turned the machine on/off a lot hoping to get lucky once so I could log in and apply the update to solve the sp2 black screen of death prob.

Thanx all

 

[Curly99]

Glad your sorted and thanks for posting the fix.

 

[Paul666]

Yeah I hate it when u find a thread with your prob and it end with fixed it but does not tell u the fix.