What is the reason to have this screen during the boot up sequence?

[Erkronos]

When I try to open my laptop, after Win 7 or Win 8 loading screen, my LCD turns into this:

What is the reason?

 

[TVeblen]

I have not seen that before. Is the screen just pure white? (in your photo it looks like 2 vertical yellow stripes, but that could just be reflection)

Here are my off the cuff guesses:

• The backlight (either fluorescent or LED) is washing (overpowering) the screen - highly unlikely.
• The graphics driver is at fault, flooding the screen with white pixels - more likely.
• The LCD display is at fault, flooding the screen with white pixels - equally likely.

Has it always done this, or is it new?

 

[Erkronos]

I have not seen that before. Is the screen just pure white? (in your photo it looks like 2 vertical yellow stripes, but that could just be reflection)

Here are my off the cuff guesses:

• The backlight (either fluorescent or LED) is washing (overpowering) the screen - highly unlikely.
• The graphics driver is at fault, flooding the screen with white pixels - more likely.
• The LCD display is at fault, flooding the screen with white pixels - equally likely.

Has it always done this, or is it new?

Nope it has been there for few months. Everytime I boot my laptop, it is like playing Russian Roulette. It either jumps to log in screen or white screen after boot loading screen. I manually turn it off and on if I get this screen. To read this post, I had to reboot my laptop manually for like 6 times. If I am lucky during the booting sequence, diagnostic loads, can't find a system restore (don't know why it tries to solve the issue with system restore), I press cancel and voila. The laptop works. It is a mystery why this happens. Also, I formatted the laptop few times and still have this issue.

 

[TVeblen]

No, my question is: was this behavior something that changed? As in: it did not do this when it was new, but a few months ago it started doing it.

Or was it doing this right out of the box?

 

[alphanumeric]

How old is this laptop? It could be a hardware fault, bad cable going to the display, failing Video card, or failing display. If the display is normal during the post, BIOS screen, but then goes bad, I'd suspect a bad windows video driver. I'd download and install the latest video driver and see what happens. If that fails I'd think about backing up your data and maybe doing a factory restore.

EDIT: Have tried connecting an external monitor? If an external monitor works OK, then you know its the display that's got a fault.

 

[Erkronos]

I bought my laptop like in the mid November of 2008 so it has been 4 years. I used to play a lot of games on my laptop but since the CPU was kinda inefficient (AMD Turion RM-70) I had to play games before the 2005. I never played hardware hungry games but the last game that I used to play a lot was Skyrim but I used several mods to increase performance while degrading the visuals. I thought games would kill the GPU but if that was true now I couldn't use the laptop. Besides, I tried few 3D games to see if it is working, it works fine again. I don't know why does the boot screen cause this issue.

 

[alphanumeric]

I don't have an answer? I'm not entirely sure I understand what you're describing.

 

[TVeblen]

I agree with alphanumeric:

• Connect an external monitor and see if the same behavior happens there.
• Completely uninstall all graphics programs and drivers, then reinstall clean.

I will add that you should undo any overclocking or gaming modifications. Set the BIOS back to defaults.


See if any of these things change anything.

 

[Erkronos]

I haven't done any overclocking since it is very risky. Tomorrow I will check if the same happens with a connected monitor.

 

[TVeblen]

And reinstall driver?

 

[Erkronos]

Good news now the laptop is not working. The prepares to boot up but restarts itself after 2 seconds.

 

[alphanumeric]

Sounds like a hardware failure, probably video card related. That's just my best guess, it could be a lot of things.

 

[TVeblen]

Did you ever try those tests we mentioned?

 

[Erkronos]

Well my laptop didn't even survived till that moment. When I press power button, the laptop turns on the lights, and I can hear that the hatd disk is kinda preparing to start. After few seconds, the laptop turns off as if it loses power supply. After one second it restarts and repeats the same process endlessly.

 

[alphanumeric]

The Video BIOS flash screen is usually the first screen to show during the POST. Then the motherboard BIOS screen comes up. It sounds like the onboard Video has failed and won't initialize. The BIOS is likely codded to try at least three times before giving up. You could open it up and take a look, but there isn't much you can do other than clean the dust out and make sure all the cooling fans work. Do you hear a sequence of beeps when you turn it on?

 

[Erkronos]

Only few electrical sounds you can hear and nothing else.

 

[TVeblen]

Try a reset:
Turn off the laptop, remove the power supply, remove the laptop battery.
Press and hold the power button for a good 30 seconds
Put everything back together and test.

 

[alphanumeric]

No BIOS beep codes usually means it's pretty bad. To be honest it could be a failed CPU, bad RAM, or any number of things. Your display problems would indicate that its most likely the video card, but there is no guarantee that that's the problem. It might even be a failed or failing power pack too. What kind of shape is your battery in?

 

[TVeblen]

Hey alpha.
I've got a couple of laptops that I work on that do not do a POST beep and have done so right out of the box. Nothing to turn it on in BIOS settings either. It annoys me.

My daughter had a Compaq laptop about this same vintage that the motherboard just started slowly dying in small steps over 6 months. First the optical drive dropped off the radar, then the sound chip started working and not working, then the video started working and not working on start, (just like the OP - but no white screen), but very often hers would startup to the desktop (you could here the Windows startup sound) but with no video. Obviously I checked and replaced parts, but whatever was going on was going on on the motherboard.
We retired that laptop. I have not had an opportunity to do an autopsy.

 

[alphanumeric]

That's interesting, I'll have to check my old Acer and see if it beeps on boot up.