Did I fry another piece of junk ?

creeper

After using my laptop I usually just walk away because it hibernates itself. A touch pulls up the request for password and its ready to go.

This time I came back an hour later and found a frozen screen with pinstripes.

Are these the stripes of death??

Thx

creeper

Nevermind..There is a child in the house. She fixed it. Go figure

Jay 78

And what was the fix?

By 'hibernate', do you really mean hibernate, not standby? The process of hibernation is pretty involved. Might be better to just set it to enter standby if you're not going to leave it unattended for extended periods.

__________________
Under Construction

sdsester

If this happens again or more frequently, there is a little, short and long, $10 circuit board (name of it escapes me at the moment) that sits at the bottom of your laptop monitor and controls the laptop screen illumination. It may be starting to fail on you. It is relatively easy to replace but you have to pull the monitor layers apart and maybe separate the monitor from the base of the machine to get at it. You can find instructions online for this.

Be a little careful. Two ends of the laptop screen bulb plug into the board. The bulb is probably a tiny florescent the width of your monitor and only about 1/8"D. It is easy to break and it can be a challenge to replace.

I just cured a failing laptop for a friend by vacuuming cat hair from the cooling fan opening. The thing was overheating for some reason and the video card was screaming for mercy. Sometimes we overlook the simple things and assume bigger causes for problems.

rossfingal

So how did she fix it?
"RF"

creeper

How should I know

rossfingal

Well -
C'mon creeper!!
ASK her!!!
(Inquiring minds want to know!)
"RF"

creeper

More trouble with the laptop, but first the "fix"

Apparently she held her finger down on the on button for " a really long time" I tried that but I guess my patience didn't hold out.

Today I got the pink lines of death. Same fix. When it restarts though, it says windows didn't shut down properly ect., going to safe mode ect.. blah blah. Now a few times today when I leave and come back to it, it does the same thing. Except this last time it said system crash and didn't give the option of starting windows in safe mode. So I tried the really long time thing and its fine again. For now, but I'm expecting more trouble. Lucky there is a few computers in the house or I'd be in bad shape. The lap top is the most convenient obviously. I'm currently using my daughters. Just sat in the sun for an hour and listened to a Webex seminar. See Ross, its mid day but its still called working

Ironlight

Video problems like that (pink lines, artifacting, etc.) are often the result of overheating. That, or you have some bad hardware such as ram, the logic board, etc.

Does it have a fan? Is it still running? Does it need to be cleaned out? Is the laptop sitting on something that it was not before, like a piece of foam rubber that may be insulating it or blocking ventilation?

And on many machines, you have to hold down the power button five or more seconds to get it to restart.

creeper

Yes it has a fan. This laptop is 6 mnths old. It was sitting beside a relentlessly growing stack of bills, so maybe that was it. Hey you may be a on to a good system. When I get the pink lines of death (in the red) time to pay my debts.

Anyway, the pink day was bad, I got the crash dump page ( for lack of a more savvy term) a few times. Its been fine ever since. Coincidentally, I did get some paperwork out

Thanks

rossfingal

Yeah, what "Ironlight" says!
Also, may be symptomatic of a failing video-card.
Bad news on a lap-top!! - "card" part of the mother-board!

rossfingal

creeper

Thanks Pal, but cross your fingers for the blocked vent

rossfingal

I hope it's just a "blocked" vent problem!!!
"RF"