My laptop works fine for a few minutes but then it suddenly stops responding and the screen becomes corrupted.

The screen dissolves into a pattern of blurred vertical lines which look like wrinkles in cloth. These wrinkles are usually coloured green but sometimes fade to grey or purple. Sometimes the whole screen fades to black or white and then the wrinkles reappear. At the same time, horizontal lines keep appearing and advancing jerkily down the screen in front of the wrinkles.

After I[ch8217]ve turned the laptop off, it refuses to boot for a while. When I press the power button, the fan whirrs and the hard drive LED lights up, but the screen doesn[ch8217]t come on and the hard drive makes no noise, which suggests that it isn[ch8217]t actually working.

When the computer does eventually boot up, it works fine for a few minutes but then the screen goes crazy and the cycle begins again. The period for which it works before becoming corrupted decreases every time.

I[ch8217]ve tried reseating the monitor cable where it attaches to the motherboard, but this hasn[ch8217]t worked. I[ch8217]ve also tried hooking up the laptop to ANOTHER monitor: when the laptop screen became corrupted, the other monitor went blank (i.e. power LED flashing but screen entirely blank as if receiving no signal).

On the face of it, this looks like a monitor problem, but why should the computer stop responding to commands when the screen gets corrupted, and why does the computer refuse to reboot for a while after it[ch8217]s happened?

Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks.


Hewlett Packard Pavilion zt1171, purchased 2002
Intel Mobile Pentium III-M 1.06GHz
Seagate Momentus 40GB HD422 (new in June)
Transcend 512MB SDRAM (new in September)

Windows XP Home
Microsoft Works Suite 2002 Try reducing the screen resolution and make sure that both monitors are CAPABLE of displaying the resolution AND refresh rates selected.Thanks for your replies.

Before all this happened, I had made no changes to my system (e.g. installing new hardware / software) and done nothing out of the ordinary. A few days ago the laptop wouldn[ch8217]t restart from standby and exhibited the symptoms described above (+fan; +HD light; -screen; -HD noise). After a few unsuccessful tries, it booted up as if nothing had happened: there was no error message, nothing untoward in the event log, and a virus scan returned a clean bill of health. It worked fine for a day or so and then the screen badness started and it[ch8217]s been the same since.

Exactly the same problem recurs in safe mode. Both monitors capable of relevant resolution & refresh rate.

I[ch8217]ve just tried disconnecting the laptop screen altogether, attaching the other monitor, then starting up the laptop. The same thing happened again: a few minutes[ch8217] perfect functioning then the monitor went blank as if it was receiving no signal. At the same time, the HD light went out on the laptop and the HD STOPPED chunnering [ch8211] this almost always happens when the screen becomes corrupted.

I[ch8217]ve previously had some [ch8216]contact creep[ch8217] problems with this computer: heat causes some of the connections to become loose (this usually affects the keyboard and is cured by reseating the ribbon cable). With this in mind, I[ch8217]ve RESEATED everything I can get my hands on (HD, RAM, processor, cables), but this hasn[ch8217]t rectified the problem. I[ch8217]ve also tried substituting an alternative RAM chip to no avail.

As before, all comments greatly appreciated.You can be about 90% certain that this a hardware problem, and that it is heat related. The fact that it works cold but not hot generally points to one of three things. 1. A defective component 2. A bad connection 3. A cold solder joint or cracked trace on the MB. Another thing, if you are running on AC power, a defective power adapter that is overheating can cause many problems. Have you tried running on battery only to see if problem persists?I think the motherboard is heading south.