Intermittent Display Loss

I think I'm in the correct forum for this puzzle. My laptop display suddenly goes black and I hear a sound like when one inserts a flashdrive. Then the display quickly comes back up for several seconds before again going briefly black and finally returning, i.e. the blackouts occur in pairs. The second outage causes another sound like when one removes a flashdrive. After that everything goes along fine for another fifteen minutes or so before doing the trick all over again. This behavior seems to've developed out of nowhere. My brain's memory is vague, but there's a chance the last change I made before the black screens started might've been an Ethernet or WIFI driver re-installation, for what that's worth. Got any remedy ideas?

I suspect a bad video cable. Your LT probably has a webcam, and if so it cutting out would cause the sound, as it is USB just like a flash drive. The cam and the video are going out concurrently. See if moving the angle of the lid causes the problem to stop or start.

Paul1149

Thanks for responding. However my now somewhat ancient laptop does NOT have a webcam. It would be nice if it did.

Because I had to tear-down my “main” laptop for a special fan replacement, I recruited an old Gateway laptopto press into service. As I had with my “main” laptop, I attached an external monitor to my old Gateway laptop via a VGA connection. Unfortunately, the externalmonitor, when connected to the old Gateway, showed some slight dark lines moving across the display no matter what refresh rate I selected. Consequently, I decided I would use the laptop's flip-up display instead. I went to“Control Panel > Display > Change the appearance of your display". There I found that the "Display" box was set for "1/2 Multiple Monitors" and the "Multiple Displays" box was setfor "Duplicate these displays". I then set “Multiple Displays to “Show desktop only on 1” since display 1 was indicated as my laptop display in the uppermost box where the “Detect & Identify” buttonsare. When I set the "Multiple Displays" box to “Show desktop only on 1” it also changed the “Display” box to show “2. VX2020wm” which is my external monitor. So I then set “Display” to “1. MobilePC display”. Of course I “Applied” the settings, clicked O.K. and de-powered my external monitor.

If my memory serves me well, I now think in retrospect that that’s when my intermittent display loss problembegan. I didn’t discern that then though.

Later, while trying to figure out the intermittent display loss, I revisited “Change the appearance of yourdisplay" and found that the settings had reverted back to "1/2 Multiple Monitors" and "Duplicate these displays". I reset them to “Show desktop only on 1” & “1. Mobile PC display” andapplied them again. That seemed to stop my intermittent display loss for a session, but the next time I booted-up the display loss behavior was back. So again, I went to “Change the appearance of your display" andfound that the settings had once more reverted to "1/2 Multiple Monitors" and "Duplicate these displays", i.e. the settings I was putting in weren’t holding for reasons I do not understand. This promptedme to just disconnect the VGA cable from Gateway laptop and that seems to’ve remedied the intermittent display loss problem, which is good. However, I don’t understand why the display settings I was entering would nothold. So in some respects I’ve achieved a partial / pragmatic solution, but not a complete solution.