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ATI issues?

post #1 of 19
1/1/05 at 8:03pm
Thread Starter 
Happy New Year all!

Yesterday, WinXP disabled my ATI driver (Radion 9700) saying it was corrput. I reinstalled. Rebooted. A minute later, the driver crashed again. Going back to an older driver seemed to work (although not as well).
This is a GoBoxx Laptop (Sager 8790).

Had it running for a day. Then, when I went to reboot today - there is no screen whatsoever. I mean, from powerup, there is no display power, nothing.

Has anyone else seen this? Recommendations appreciated.

Thanks.
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post #2 of 19
1/1/05 at 9:07pm
The mobo is in an electrical shock and can be took out only by another electrical shock. Unplugg everu chord from the lappy, remove the battery for 5 minutes, and then connect the battery and plug it in and see if it works
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post #3 of 19
1/1/05 at 9:38pm
Thread Starter 
I'll try that - thanks....

BTW, the computer powers up - the drives seem to be spinning. The monitor is blank... with no power...
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post #4 of 19
1/1/05 at 9:58pm
Thread Starter 
Well, no go....

I'm convinced it's a driver issue. Ever since the video driver crashed, there's been problems. After a sweep from Spy Sweeper, I rebooted, and that's when the screen no longer powered up. Because this system has a video bios as well as a video card driver - I wonder if Spy Sweeper deleted the bios drivers?

I can't get it hooked to an external monitor until Monday - every monitor is a VGA, and the laptop is only DVI - and I have no conversion. The S-Video out yields nothing, but I think the system needs to be fully running for that to appear....

Argh!!!
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post #5 of 19
1/1/05 at 10:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Erebus_505X
The mobo is in an electrical shock and can be took out only by another electrical shock. Unplugg everu chord from the lappy, remove the battery for 5 minutes, and then connect the battery and plug it in and see if it works
wtf?
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post #6 of 19
1/1/05 at 11:01pm
Maybe try re-seating the memory if possible. Could just be a loose connection. Or maybe the electric shock has captured your memory as well
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post #7 of 19
1/1/05 at 11:11pm
Thread Starter 
It's a thought - but not sure how the memory would make the video not turn on... usually the screen will come on, and if there's a problem, you'd see an error or something. I see nothing
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post #8 of 19
1/1/05 at 11:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by insider
It's a thought - but not sure how the memory would make the video not turn on... usually the screen will come on, and if there's a problem, you'd see an error or something. I see nothing
Actually no memory = no boot (and no display). It should give you some kind of sign by giving you a beep code that the memory is not installed though.

If your video driver crashed, you would still be able to boot up and go into safe mode without issue. I think you may be dealing with a hardware issue here.
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post #9 of 19
1/1/05 at 11:33pm
Actually, bad memory will frequently cause a blank screen. Make sure that you touch the chasis before the memory. Good luck.
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post #10 of 19
1/2/05 at 1:55am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the tips...
Yeah, no beeps or anything. It's been on for a few hours, and if I press Fn F11, the wireless light will toggle. So, it's still responding, just no display.
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post #11 of 19
1/2/05 at 4:30am
Have you tried hooking it up to an external monitor?
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post #12 of 19
1/2/05 at 6:32am
Electrical shock means the mobo gets in some sort of freeze like status. It just have been not receiving enough electricity and it is a shock. When you unplugg your notebook(it is off) with the battery is still in electricity still is going trough the mobo. The second electrical shock is to remove any kind of electricity from the mobo by removing the battery for 5 minutes.

IT IS NOT A DRIVER OR ANY KIND OF SOFTWARE PROBLEM.
When your computer starts up the mobo is cheching for the others components, CPU, ram HDD, video.etc. If it is not passing the POST sequence there are only 3 possible causes:
1 broken mobo (just a hardware failure)
2 one of the components has failed
3 the mobo is in an electrical shock.

That is what i know.

try starting your notebook without the battery, just with the AC, after you have remoived the battery for 5 minutes.

P.S. THe remove battery helped me, my gateway m505X was not posting, and the gateway logo was not appearing any more...
GOOD luck
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post #13 of 19
1/2/05 at 12:22pm
Thread Starter 
Violator - that's my attempt today. I don't have a DVI to VGA conversion here, and of course, not one store has it either. The other monitors are VGA so I'm stuck at least until tomorrow.

Erebus, thanks for the info. Here's what happened, the main ATI driver failed. I reinstalled it. I also reinstalled the onboard video for the system itself. The ATI driver failed a second and third time. So, I installed the Catalyst drivers. These installed after a slight mod and worked for a day. From there, because things were so odd, I ran a virus scan, checked ok. Then SpySweeper. It found the usually cookies, ads, and such. The wireless lan once in a while drops down to 1MB with certain routers, so I rebooted to reset the computer. It was then that the screen did not come back up. The Catalyst drivers are not meant for a laptop, but the mod I did got them to work. Shortly before the reboot I was taking a look at the settings for the display. I'm hoping that I accidentally shut off the laptop as the main monitor. Once I get an external monitor hooked up I should be able to see what's up. If that doesn't work, it's hardware related. Currently, the S-Video out shows nothing.

On to more tests....
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post #14 of 19
1/2/05 at 12:35pm
Or it may be broken LCD. I hope not.
The whole software stuff is a coincidence. Unless your video driver disabled the LCD from the VGA bios. It is a rare case but possible
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post #15 of 19
1/2/05 at 1:26pm
Thread Starter 
Hey Erebus,
that's exactly what I'm thinking - as I tried to update the VGA bios.

Let me ask, if that VGA bios is hosed, would the external DVI out still work?
And, how would you go about redoing/resetting that VGA bios?

Thanks for your knowledge!
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post #16 of 19
1/2/05 at 4:47pm
Try the external monitor on DVI, VGA whatever.
now i ve been sleeping for the last 4 hours and i'm confused. Did you try to flash your VGA bios???
If you have done that, there is a major chance you f*cked up the notebook. A wrong bios flash can cause the video card to be destroeyd. And the mobo can't find the GPU.
If you had a VGA bios problem in a desktop it could have been easily fixed. You would just your PC with a normal PCI graphics card and you could have flashed 2000 bioses to fix it, but in a lappy....
I hope i'm wrong about flashing the VGA BIOS and you haven't done that.
If the display driver has written something there you didn't void the warranty and you just contact tech support and shipp them the notebook for repairs....
Hope this helps
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post #17 of 19
1/2/05 at 6:14pm
Thread Starter 
Update:
I finally got it hooked to an external display.
Nothing. F***!
I didn't flash the bios - I don't really know how to do that.
Everything I did was driver related. That's it. There was the
"on board" video driver and the ATI driver. If the "on board" was
flashing the bios, then maybe I did. It was all done within WinXP
however, not in a setup or dos.

This really screws the pooch - it means it has to go back, and as you all know, that can take weeks. I have no idea if my data is any good now either - there's no way to get it off there.

What a bunch of s***. At this point I'm out of solutions.

Thanks for all of your help.

Signed,
seriously hosed.
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post #18 of 19
1/2/05 at 6:51pm
Contact tech support!
Ask for a replacement mobo.
Sorry i couldn't help you
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post #19 of 19
1/2/05 at 7:35pm
Thread Starter 
I'll be on the horn with them first thing in the morning.
You did help a lot - thank you. Narrowing down the problem
is the best way to solve the issue.


Cheers,
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