Upgrading & Fixing Laptops DUMmIES

The LCD Won’t Display ................................................................................

The LEDs flash, you hear the hard drive spin, and you feel the gentle, reas-

suring rush of air coming out of the cooling vent. But your LCD does not

display.. .or at least doesn’t display what you expected to see. I guess you

can see by now that I’m going to advise: Don’t panic. You can take several

steps to determine whether your LCD is dead, demised, and bereft of life

(or merely sleeping).

Shut off the machine and leave it be for 10 seconds. While you are waiting,

make certain that it is properly attached to its AC adapter, which is in turn

plugged in to a functioning wall outlet. Turn the machine back on and watch

the screen carefully. Depending on your machine’s design, you should see

bits of text or images onscreen before Windows loads; the clue to the nature

of your problem may lay here.

The first thing you should see is an indication that the system BIOS is load-

ing. On some machines you see a few lines of simple text, white on black, that

identify the BIOS manufacturer and version; you may also see a message that

tells you the key that opens the BIOS screen before the operating system is

loaded. (You may be asked to press the Esc key or one of the function keys.)

On my current laptop, the manufacturer chooses to use the opening screen

as an advertisement for itself (as if I don’t already know the maker of the

machine that is beneath my fingers). And so I see the name of the manufac-

turer in big red letters and a slogan telling me how wonderful these folks

really are; there’s also an advertisement from those marvelous folks who

made the microprocessor inside the case. Down at the bottom of the screen

is a line of text that instructs me how to open the system BIOS.

If you see nothing at all......................................................................

You’ve got a problem with the LCD itself, the connection between the display

device and the motherboard, or the display adapter on the motherboard.

Turn off the laptop and attach an alternate display to the machine — either

a standard computer monitor plugged in to a video output connector or a

television screen attached to a TV output. Consult the instruction manual for

your laptop (or study the key caps carefully) to determine how to change the

output from the laptop to an external monitor or television.

Now start your machine and shift the video output to the alternate display. If

you see an image, try pressing the key to display the system BIOS. Go to the

section that deals with video output and see if it is properly set up to work

with an LCD screen. In some situations, the BIOS can become corrupted by a

Chapter 20: Ten Quick Solutions 313