iamsuperbleeder

the entire back of the LCD assembly lights up I never knew that until about 15 minutes ago...







trying to diagnose a screen problem... I think it's the cable that connects the LCD to the main board... it's only a $5 part, so I'll probably start with that

TOYOTA 1

dang, hope its not the vid card. or is it on board video?

iamsuperbleeder

it's on board video, but I know it's not the motherboard; I had a second one of these laptops (the same exact series) that I was fixing for a friend, and I actually ended up swapping the motherboards (and the web cam module) between the two; he's an older guy that said he never uses the web cam for anything anyway; he said he didn't even know it had one or what it was, lol. So this motherboard came out of a perfectly working laptop, and the other laptop is also working perfectly, so it's either just the cable, or worst case it's the LCD assembly itself...

we'll see; the cable is ordered, so I'll find out next week



I figured I'd order a $5 cable and test that first, before dropping $70 on a new LCD

TOYOTA 1

time for some alienware

iamsuperbleeder

pshh... Alienware is overrated... I build all my own performance systems... I frown upon all these Compaq's, Dell's, and HP systems that are ready out of the box desktop systems; they're always lacking something...

And if I wanted to get a "high performance laptop", it would be an Asus probably

But I have no use for a "high performance" laptop. I have an HP G71 that I upgraded the CPU in because the stock Celeron just wasn't going to cut it but the only thing the laptop gets used for is internet, photo and music sharing, and maybe CD burning, while on the road away from home. If I'm away from home, I don't have time to be on the computer for any long period of time anyway

TOYOTA 1

yea i would only buy a performance laptop because i have never built one.

are they any harder to build than desktop's?

i build my own desktop's and get allot more bang for my buck. i need to build another one soon. im still using my old amd 3000 with an msi k8n lol. i built it over 5 years ago and since have upraged some stuff like, 2 gigs of ram in dual channel mode with serial ata and with an msi gts 250 twin frozer with 1gb ddr3. yea nvidia is the ish

theMonch

Its probably the cable or the interface matrix on the LCD. I have had a few sonys do that after a while. The way you can tell if it's the screen is to squeeze around the rim of the lcd. If you can clear up the trouble with a little pressure, then it's the screen itself. If you squeeze to the left or the right of where the screen starts breaking up vertically it should clear up.

As for the cable, if it's that then you should be able to clear it up by bending and manipulating it a bit to clear it up.


Good luck.

iamsuperbleeder

well it's rather hard to "build" a laptop you can only fit certain parts into certain chassis's

it is better to buy a higher performance laptop if you're looking to use it for gaming or whatever while on the go, or even as a desktop replacement all together

Alienware does make decent laptops; I've just never been fond of their overpriced desktop systems...




yeah I tried manipulating the cable some, and gave the edges of the LCD some pressure like you said, and neither even made the screen flicker the slightest bit so I figured is just cheaper to start with a $5 cable, lol





I've got the laptop hooked up from my 22" flat screen right now; just did a full format and fresh XP Pro install, and I'm going through now and getting it up to date, and installing a hole slew of software, so all it needs is a screen and it'll be ready to go!

Probably will sell it on eBay; I don't really need a second laptop, but the extra cash wouldn't hurt

iamsuperbleeder

it's truly a ghetto laptop at the moment

Magnusian

Heh, I have one of those Toshiba's sitting on my desk unused atm. Has OpenSolaris on it, haven't turned it on since the day I got my netbook. It's slightly older, but it does have a C2D @ 1.73 (T4400? I'd have to turn it on to check... effort...), 4gb of RAM, a 7200RPM 250gb hdd upgrade, and the battery still lasts for years. Not had any trouble with the screens, though I am not a big fan of the case design of this generation. Still, one heck of an upgrade from the Toshiba Portege 660CDT I was runnin'!

iamsuperbleeder

Oh this one doesn't have all that, lol. It's just got some AMD 2ghz Dual Core and just 1 GB of RAM... that's why I only put XP Pro on it It came it Vista on it, but it struggled with Vista, lol. It FLYS with XP

Magnusian

Mine came with 32bit Vista and the manual claimed it fully supported 4gb of RAM, but when I upgraded to 64bit Vista a lot of the Toshiba support software wasn't there and so several of the Fn key functions were unavailable. When I called up Toshiba support about this they told me that "Installing a 64bit operating system on this laptop should be impossible, you only have a 32bit cpu!" and that "This machine was never meant for 64bit operating systems and the bios only supports 3.25gb of RAM max." XP has drivers, and that's it, case volume control does not work and you lose all Fn key functionality (the light turns on, but nobody's home). The major bummer about the machine is that it has GMA945 graphics, which means no geometry processor, as well as being underclocked due to being in a laptop, it basically had all that was needed for Aero and that was it, had to do software rendering for everything.

Other than a few annoyances, such as it bluescreening when attempting to use the remaining 768mb of RAM but, my usage would rarely see it hit this point. After I upgraded the hdd and turned virtual mem back on (this was the real cause of the bluescreens) it actually ran stellar, though I couldn't overclock the video (tool is 32bit only). I put OpenSolaris on it, but then Oracle bought Sun and has basically been systematically trying to kill the community (half of the repository appears to be just gone) and I retired it soon after getting my EEEpc 1201N which runs Win7 amazingly (ION rocks).

iamsuperbleeder

Yeah this had 64bit Vista on it to start with. I thought about trying to load 7 on it, but the 1gb of RAM kept me from doing that MAYBE if it had 2gb, I'd give it a try... but I feel it would be painfully slow after hitting that 1gb limit pretty quick, lol. With 7, my desktop idles using 1.8gb of memory Luckily there's another 4.2gb behind it to back it up

Magnusian

Actually, you should find that Win7 handles systems with 1gb of ram much better than Vista does. Just turn some things off, optimize! A fresh install of Windows is not a "ready for production" install of Windows!

Also, my Workstation idles at 3.4gb of usage (Win 7 Pro), well, more like 3.2gb, I've got a bunch of crap open atm (though I included IM clients and ssh sessions with the idle total). 2.5gb of that is the virtual machine it has to run 24/7.

iamsuperbleeder

Well by idle I meant with nothing at all open

No windows anyway; there's still some things in the background running obviously that are always running, like AVG, Everest, Windowblinds, etc...


Once I get this computer completed back together, I'll see if I can maybe find a cheap 2x1gb RAM kit for it; them I might just put 7 on it Only problem is that I think the license I have for 7 is limited to only one computer...

Magnusian

To me "idle" is when the system is idle, regardless of what is open.

Unless your Win7 license is a volume license, you can be sure that you cannot have it activated on more than one machine at a time. Technically you can install it and use the key on multiple machines (even activate), however the last machine you activate it on is the only machine you can get updates for or connect to the net without fear of repercussion (it'll lock down any machine that doesn't match the activation). Keys are also sometimes tied to a system, known as OEM keys, and these are by far the most common. These keys "must" be sold with a complete (set of parts) system, and once activated on that system, are semi-permanently tied to it. These keys are cheaper than standard retail keys, but unlike standard retail keys where you can use them on an infinite number of systems (one at a time). An OEM key is not considered resuable (except when used on the system it's tied to), and will have to be phone-reactivated every time you install it on a new machine. Well, up to a point, MS will catch on and eventually blacklist the OEM key, however they do make allowances for motherboard replacements, key upgrades, etc, but nothing that constitutes a complete replacement system (only a mobo swap should be noticed though, and only this will make Windows require a reactivation, so swap all the other parts you want at your leisure) is "allowed".

A volume license is generally good (and won't require activation, also comes with volume install media and will not work with retail media) for as many machines as you can throw it on (MS sells the keys for different price points based on target number of machines, though all VLKs seem to have an infinite number of concurrent installs allowed).

iamsuperbleeder

Nah I got this key a while back and it's probably for one machine at a time. There was a deal going with MS to get it with a student discount, and I was able to download a Win 7 .iso file directly from MS, and get a key for Home Premium, for $30 so I jumped on it

I think that little deal ended at the end of last year though.



I'd have to see if I can source another deal like that...

iamsuperbleeder

Actually...

MS has a deal going for Win 7 Pro for student discounts $30, BUT, it's an upgrade...

if I'm not mistake, does that mean that you could just install XP first, and then pop the CD in and use the upgrade key and install 7 Pro over it?

http://www.microsoft.com/student/en/...w/default.aspx

MaK92-4RnR

I agree with you superbleeder... out of the box desktops/lap tops from big named companies are always missing something. I'd rather build and piece together, and buy a completely empty case.

iamsuperbleeder

graphics power is usually what they're missing

the Core 2 Duos, i5's, and even the i7's are becoming standard equipment now, and can be had at a decent price in a pre-built ready to go system. It's not uncommon to see 4gb of RAM in an out-of-the-box system either. But these system's downfall is the integrated graphics with shared memory that they're using... absolutely kills the machine, and makes it useless for anything other than web surfing and syncing your iPod to it