PC Pals Forum
Technical Help & Discussion => Self Building, Upgrading & General Hardware Help => Topic started by: renshaw8 on January 16, 2006, 04:44
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I hope somebody can help me out with this. I have a 5 year old Satellite Toshiba laptop and lately when I first boot up, the Tosiba logo comes on and then the screen turns dark. It might take a split second to a couple of seconds. I received a pop up message about a month ago sayin something about a bad display driver. So, I went online to Toshiba and downloaded a new driver. I installed it and it was OK for a while and now it seems worst then ever. It took me 2 hours today to get it to come on. I had to reinstall the driver twice before I got the screen to come on when I booted up. I'm afraid to shut it off. Does this sound familiar to anybody or does someone know what the problem might be??
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thats an odd one. I have heard of viruses that could mimic this but I doubt it very much. Do you, or have you, often connected this laptop to an external monitor?
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Thanks Sam for your reply. I run an antivirus regularly. (Antivir). I've never connected a external monitor to my laptop. It seems that if I try to boot with the power cord unplugged, (Just on battery), I'll have a better chance of getting the screen to startup. It may just seem that way though.
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well i couldnt understand that might be a factor if it was the other way around... can you tell the type of display / graphics driver?
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I have a Toshiba Satellite 1805-S203 laptop with a Trident Cyberblade Ai1 AGP (22) Driver.
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umm ok. I'm not sure what could cause this. Does your screen always come on to display the POST / enter BIOS screen?
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I really don't know what all that means, Sam
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ok... when your computer turns on, assuming you can see the screen what does it show?
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When I turn on my computer it starts normally first showing a Toshiba logo for a couple of seconds and then a Windows ME logo before starting. Now it will go black (Screen goes out) a second after the Toshiba logo comes on. It just flashes on and then the screen goes black. I've been leaving my computer on lately but restarting it and it seems if I restart it's OK but if I leave it off all night it will act up in the morning.
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umm thats rather odd.
So on every boot up you see the windows me logo?
Have you updated to the lastest windows me? Also are you sure you have the right driver for your hardware? I have seen cases when the latest driver, downloaded from the windows update site, has actually messed up the driver by trying to install the lastest version. Do you have a cd with the original driver on?
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Yes, the ME logo comes up on every boot. I've received a couple of updates from Windows but not a newer version of ME. I got the new display driver from the Toshiba website. No, I don't have the Windows ME CD.
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Yes, the ME logo comes up on every boot.
so then this would seriously indicate that the driver is at fault or some other windows graphical issue.
No, I don't have the Windows ME CD.
I didn't mean the Windows ME disc, I meant the driver disc for the graphics card - or is this a pc world brought laptop? If so, then you might not have one, but a recovery cd instead?
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I'm not sure that Win Me is still supported by MS. But the Me logo does come up at every boot Sam. At least it used to when I was using it.
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The Me logo has always come on before startup.
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So it must be at some point after windows takes control over the graphics device. This strongly suggests to me that there is some graphics driver error. Do you have the original disk around? If not might be worth trying to roll back the driver, actually can you do that in ME, if not use an older version of the driver.
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I replaced the display driver before. Trident Cyberblade Ai1 AGP 22 from the Toshiba website. Is that the driver that you are talking about?
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yes but no. I'm specifically refering to the driver that was installed by default, not any updated version - the one that came with the computer.
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Sorry Sam, I don't know how to see if that original driver is still around anymore. I'm not real dumb with computers but I'm not real smart either. Since it seems that if the computer is warm when I don't have a problem (on all night), do you think it would be in the monitor part of my laptop? If I shut it off before bed, it seems to have the problem in the morning.
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I'm not sure. From what you say I really think it is a display driver issue.
What I need you to check is if you have any of the original CDs that came with the laptop?
If not then I'll have a hunt around for another version of the driver.
Do you play games on it at all? Cause I have heard about DirectX and OpenGL causing issues, but I dont think they would cause this sort of problem.
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Do you know how to access the BIOS on your laptop ?
Its called SETUP on the screen so will say something like press DEL to enter setup or it may be F1 or F2, although laptops sometimes have a 2 key combination to enter it.
If you can access it look for the option that says Laod Failsafe Defaults or Load Bios Defaults then save and exit and see if it boots normally after that.
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Sam, I don't have any CD's. I do play games and have a flight simulator. And Sandra, My laptop says press F2 to enter setup. When I did that the only thing that came up was SELECT BOOT DEVICE with 4 options. (C) CD-ROM......(F) FDD......(B) Built in HDD......(D) Default SYSTEM SETUP DEVICE. I selected (F) thinking it must be the failsafe option you mentioned. The Toshiba logo came up for a second and then changed back to the 4 options again. I selected F again and then my computer started without giving me any save options.
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Try D, the F is to boot from a floppy drive :)
It should open a window up with a list of options in a left and a right window.
Use the arrow keys, UP, Down, Left and Right to highlight Load Bios Defaults or Load Failsafe Defaults and press Enter.
Then save and exit.