strange "carousel" display issue

Hey guys, first of all thanks for clicking on the thread and I'll be very informative so give me a hand here please

I am encountering a very strange issue under Windows 7 Professional RTM installed on my netbook. At completely random times, the screen will go into what I can only describe as a carousel-like mode, and the projection of the image onto the monitor will just rotate kind of like a messed up film reel or something. I have installed the latest drivers from Intel and tried not installing those drivers. I also tried disabling aero effects by switching to classic mode but instead of going into carousel mode the screen would just turn black, which gives me even less information. There are no errors displayed when the problem occurs, in either situation (aero enabled/disabled).

Here is a video of the problem (1.3 MB): DSCN4241.MOV

I'm a rather experienced UNIX user, and one of the (very few) things that disappoints me about Windows is the lack of (or perhaps my lack of knowledge of) any error log files. Does anyone know if an error log or something of the sort exists in Windows for this kind of problem? That would be extremely helpful

I should also note a few things:
-- The operating system itself is running fine when this happens.
-- If I move the mouse vertically, the portion below the cursor will turn white (you can kind of see this in the video), and if I move the mouse horizontally, the screen will stagger its rotation and I can sometimes get it to get "stuck" in one position for a while before it breaks loose and continues its carousel rampage once more
-- I do not have a secondary display to troubleshoot with

SPECS
====
Machine: Toshiba NB205-N210
Display Adapter: Mobile Intel 945 Express Chipset Family
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional RTM

Thanks again for any and all help

In my experience, 99.9% of the time this is a gfx driver issue. Boot in safe mode (which loads the minimum necessary generic drivers) and see what happens. It is a fact that some systems do not tolerate gfx driver (any driver) upgrades well; I find this especially true with NVIDIA gfx drivers. If that is the case here, roll back to the previous driver.

Monk

Thanks for the help guys.

I don't know why I didn't think of testing in safe mode earlier, oh well, I did and sure enough the problem doesn't occur there which indicates it's a driver issue. So the Intel driver that is installed now is (8.15.10.1930) where as the one that is installed automatically from the Windows Update repositories is (8.15.10.1724). I somehow recall doing this before and it didn't work, but maybe I was just going about it the wrong way and not uninstalling the current driver first or something.

Anyways, I'll report back and see if this fixes it.

cheebz said:

Hey guys, first of all thanks for clicking on the thread and I'll be very informative so give me a hand here please

I am encountering a very strange issue under Windows 7 Professional RTM installed on my netbook. At completely random times, the screen will go into what I can only describe as a carousel-like mode, and the projection of the image onto the monitor will just rotate kind of like a messed up film reel or something. I have installed the latest drivers from Intel and tried not installing those drivers. I also tried disabling aero effects by switching to classic mode but instead of going into carousel mode the screen would just turn black, which gives me even less information. There are no errors displayed when the problem occurs, in either situation (aero enabled/disabled).

Here is a video of the problem (1.3 MB): DSCN4241.MOV

I'm a rather experienced UNIX user, and one of the (very few) things that disappoints me about Windows is the lack of (or perhaps my lack of knowledge of) any error log files. Does anyone know if an error log or something of the sort exists in Windows for this kind of problem? That would be extremely helpful

I should also note a few things:
-- The operating system itself is running fine when this happens.
-- If I move the mouse vertically, the portion below the cursor will turn white (you can kind of see this in the video), and if I move the mouse horizontally, the screen will stagger its rotation and I can sometimes get it to get "stuck" in one position for a while before it breaks loose and continues its carousel rampage once more
-- I do not have a secondary display to troubleshoot with

SPECS
====
Machine: Toshiba NB205-N210
Display Adapter: Mobile Intel 945 Express Chipset Family
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional RTM

Thanks again for any and all help

I have the same netbook and the same problem .. it happened 3 times in 8 months ..I have to unplug power lead and take battery out to be able to restart... I totally agree with HMONK.. It is the NVIDIA driver .. I downgraded the driver and haven't seen the problem again yet.

madmansam said:

cheebz said:

Hey guys, first of all thanks for clicking on the thread and I'll be very informative so give me a hand here please

I am encountering a very strange issue under Windows 7 Professional RTM installed on my netbook. At completely random times, the screen will go into what I can only describe as a carousel-like mode, and the projection of the image onto the monitor will just rotate kind of like a messed up film reel or something. I have installed the latest drivers from Intel and tried not installing those drivers. I also tried disabling aero effects by switching to classic mode but instead of going into carousel mode the screen would just turn black, which gives me even less information. There are no errors displayed when the problem occurs, in either situation (aero enabled/disabled).

Here is a video of the problem (1.3 MB): DSCN4241.MOV

I'm a rather experienced UNIX user, and one of the (very few) things that disappoints me about Windows is the lack of (or perhaps my lack of knowledge of) any error log files. Does anyone know if an error log or something of the sort exists in Windows for this kind of problem? That would be extremely helpful

I should also note a few things:
-- The operating system itself is running fine when this happens.
-- If I move the mouse vertically, the portion below the cursor will turn white (you can kind of see this in the video), and if I move the mouse horizontally, the screen will stagger its rotation and I can sometimes get it to get "stuck" in one position for a while before it breaks loose and continues its carousel rampage once more
-- I do not have a secondary display to troubleshoot with

SPECS
====
Machine: Toshiba NB205-N210
Display Adapter: Mobile Intel 945 Express Chipset Family
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional RTM

Thanks again for any and all help

I have the same netbook and the same problem .. it happened 3 times in 8 months ..I have to unplug power lead and take battery out to be able to restart... I totally agree with HMONK.. It is the NVIDIA driver .. I downgraded the driver and haven't seen the problem again yet.

Ah I see, you've got the nice nVidia ION chipset. I'm stuck with Intel . When mine screws up i have to put it to sleep and then wake it up.. That's the only way to fix it without rebooting.. It's also a hell of a lot more frequent than yours though.

It never happened when I am on battery !! always when I am using the main power supply .. I googled it but nothing really made sense to me .. I called toshiba and their advise was to set the display proformance to balance not high ..it didn't work .. I am ok so far with the old driver till something happen again .

Bad news guys, it just happened again..

At this point I'm unsure of what to do. It should be noted that I don't have this problem under any GNU/Linux distribution, so I know it has something to do with how Windows 7 controls the hardware, and most likely not the hardware itself.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd appreciate it.

I'll be standing by.