Lost the video during Win7 update

[paul1149]

I just got an Acer netbook with W7 Starter. I was bringing it up to date with online updating, when suddenly I noticed that there was no video. I plugged in an external VGA and it was black too. All the running lights were on, so I pushed the on button, which was set to turn the unit off. Upon rebooting, the video was back and Windows was doing its update configuration thing over the splash screen.

One of the updates was Intel's graphics driver. So I tell myself it was a hiccup related to that. But that's unusual, and I once had a laptop that the video cut out for moment, then came back, and then two weeks later left permanently. Since the video chip is the achilles heel of laptops, I'm a little concerned. Does anyone have any perspective to offer? Thanks.

 

[whs]

This is normal. During a graphics driver update, you will have a period of black screen. There is nothing to worry about.

 

[paul1149]

Thanks, I appreciate the input. Just to be clear, this was about 3 minutes long before I shut it down.

 

[whs]

Well, that is a little long. But who knows what else went on in the machine. And the machine specs also play a role.

All my systems run from SSDs and I have i5 and i7 CPUs and 6 to 8GB of RAM. So updates are relatively fast. But on a slow HDD with a slow CPU that takes more time. And netbooks are not known to be speed champions.

 

[paul1149]

Yes, this is not the norm, even for netbooks. It does seem to be fine now. I'll watch it for a while, and give it some stress testing. Thanks again.

 

[whs]

Look into the Reliability Monitor whether it recorded some unusual event.

 

[paul1149]

Very cool. I didn't know about that tool. It shows a lot of successful updates and no problems whatever. That helps my confidence level! Thanks again, whs.

 

[Layback Bear]

Some video driver are large and will even take longer than 3 min.

 

[paul1149]

This one was 54MB. Not small, especially for an Atom N270, but I've never seen anything like this happen. Seems to be great now, I'll continue to keep an eye on it.

 

[whs]

Paul, did you just buy this netbook ?

 

[paul1149]

Yes, it's new to me.

edit: but it's a used machine.

 

[whs]

OK, I see. Because for the price of a new netbook there would be better options in the 10 inch league.

 

[paul1149]

I refurb these puppies. It's not for me. Once I sold an HP G72, and a week later the video died. It had done a similar momentary lapse like this machine, and memories of that are what this is kicking up.

 

[whs]

I see. I was just wondering why someone would buy a Netbook these days.

 

[paul1149]

What do you like, tablets?

 

[whs]

I personally am not really a fan of tablets. But they are handy at times. I use my Nexus 7 sparingly and mostly for navigation, trip planning and free calls from Europe to the US.

For the wife I just got this little guy. She wanted something a bit more familiar.

But we only use those during travel. At home I like my desktops and the big screens. The wife prefers laptops - that she never moves. My laptop gets little use. I used to use it for teaching at our local computer club. But I gave that up.

 

[paul1149]

I admit I'm not a tablet guy either. That's why I think netbooks are great for students and others. I'm sorry to see them going. I may be missing something about the benefit of the evolving tastes in portables, or maybe the market's being manipulated in order to keep demand up. The heavy handed changes of Win8's front end to me are a case in point

 

[whs]

I think the changes come about by the young generation. They are more consumption oriented than willing to create something. And for that the new portable devices are good enough. But if you need to do any serious work, tablets are pretty useless. Not so much because of their specs, because they are getting pretty powerful, but because of their human factors - small screen, difficult input options, not many attachment possibilities for external devices.

 

[paul1149]

True. I have to admire tablets for what they do. Remarkable engineering. But to get anything done, I'll go with a desktop/laptop/netbook at this point. I sold a netbook to a friend for her daughter. She was on it 24/7 for two years. Now it collects dust because of her new ipad jr. What does she do on it? Chat with her friends all day.

 

[whs]

Yeah, the babble generation. One day they will have to implant chips where we have a brain.