THe screen of my compaq presario increasingly often fades to white and remains so for long periods. The computer seems otherwise normal. How can I rectify this? Any other person aware of this problem?

My friend is having the same problem with his Toshiba S35-609. It fades to white after almost an hour and has to be shut down for a while before it goes back to normal, but only for another hour before doing it again. I'm thinking it may be the FL Inverter board but I can't find any place that says the inverter will cause this exact issue.

If you find an answer please let me know and I will do the same for you,

Thanks!

I have a Compaq Presario V2000 I purchased from the Navy Exchange in February 2006. It has been working marvelously, even though I am less than gentle with it, taking it to my music performances, 4,000 miles of road trips and moves, etc.

About 2 weeks ago I suddenly had the display fade rapidly to white on start-up. As far as I could tell, the computer was functioning fine otherwise, I just couldn't see anything. I could not shut it down normally because I could not see the Start menu and mouse cursor. Out of desperation, I unplugged it and dropped the battery out of the case, let it sit about ten minutes, then reassembled it and started it up again normally.

It has done this twice more since then, and I can't figure out anything I could be doing wrong. I can't seem to find anything out from Compaq, either. Heard anything more about this?

Its the video drivers. The same thing happened to me. Download the latest ones from the website. Also make sure its for your exact laptop.

Did you tried with external monitor?

FL Inverter can cause these symptoms. Many times when the Inverter is failing however you will hear a nice " sound" coming from the laptop screen. Pressing your ear close you will find it to be coming from the area that the FL Inverter is attached. First, as stated above, check your video drivers. Make sure they match your make, model and Operating System. Also remember that many times the laptop video card is modified by the OEM manufacturer so their actual drivers available at say, HP.com, would/may be different that that offered for the seemingly same video chipset at say, Nvidia or ATI.com. With laptops its usually best to go with the driver at the OEM's website instead. If that does not fix it after a reboot then start looking into the Inverter issue. Good luck!

I also had this problem. The laptop has since had to be sent to Novatech to be repaired. I thought the laptop would surly be dameged first time it occured but it did start up again.

Notatech recommended that I disconnect the battery and run it only on mains power due to static buildup possibly causing the problem, this worked and the probblem didn't occur again, unfornunatly later when I reconnected the battery it started occuring much more severly every time from power on whether the battery was connected or not.

When it was occuring at random it took about 6 seconds and every other pixel would fade slightly before the other every other in a checkerboard sort of pattern. The last time it was running before it failed it was flickering waves moving down the screen as well. Once it was occuring every time from startup it occured in chunks of the screen at a time that would overlap untill all was white.