Black Screen in Full Screen issue

[Fry]

After my last trip away I noticed that any time I use full screen mode at all the screen will go black after a couple of minutes. I am not sure if it is an issue from a wire coming loose from the trip, from the video card drivers (haven't had issues with them till I went away), or being connected to an external screen. The fact that it only happens in full screen makes me think its the drivers (full screen for movies or games that is). The trip makes me wonder if it is a lose wire though. Has anyone had anything similar happen?

Right now I can just play with games in windowed mode so it isnt a big deal at least.

[mw86]

we are going to need the full specs of your system to help. GPU driver version too. Which Windows version also.

black screen issues are not common... when gpu is overclocked too high on core this can happen but I have feeling your completely stock with no overclock. Please list some specs and we can further support you

[mw86]

After my last trip away I noticed that any time I use full screen mode at all the screen will go black after a couple of minutes. I am not sure if it is an issue from a wire coming loose from the trip, from the video card drivers (haven't had issues with them till I went away), or being connected to an external screen. The fact that it only happens in full screen makes me think its the drivers (full screen for movies or games that is). The trip makes me wonder if it is a lose wire though. Has anyone had anything similar happen?

Right now I can just play with games in windowed mode so it isnt a big deal at least.

Hello Fry. I would like to assist you but haven't heard back since your first post over two weeks ago... if your still having the issue or if its fixed at this point... I would still like to hear about it my friend The possible reasons you listed are also valid too... I had some issues on external screen with older hardware and drivers... please list your system specs like Hardware, operating system and video driver version if your still having the issue. Regards -MW86

[Fry]

Sorry for not responding. My last post appears to have been eaten by internet ghosts and the last couple of months have been crazy. I fixed the previous issue which in the end was a result to an auto brightness feature. Everything was fine outside not being able to change my brightness until the last trip I just came home from. There were a few bumps and I am 90% sure I have a cable slightly out or a cracked cable or card.

***CURRENT PROBLEM***

Under a graphic load I lose power to the screen. The alien light on the back of the screen goes out, the screen goes black. However the bold Alienware on the front of the screen stays on, as does the programs and sounds. The problem does not affect external screens. Under normal usage, web or word it rarely happens, but when it does pushing on either side of the power button and holding down keeps the screen on. I have reseated the video cable, but did not know which cable supplied power to the screen and the alien light. When trying to reinstall the new video card drivers the machine blue screened. Will try again after work.

Query

Which cable provides power to the screen and light under graphics load.

At the stage of going to dell support, but with another trip in a week it's bad timing if I can fix it myself.

[Brian]

Sorry for not responding. My last post appears to have been eaten by internet ghosts and the last couple of months have been crazy. I fixed the previous issue which in the end was a result to an auto brightness feature. Everything was fine outside not being able to change my brightness until the last trip I just came home from. There were a few bumps and I am 90% sure I have a cable slightly out or a cracked cable or card.

***CURRENT PROBLEM***

Under a graphic load I lose power to the screen. The alien light on the back of the screen goes out, the screen goes black. However the bold Alienware on the front of the screen stays on, as does the programs and sounds. The problem does not affect external screens. Under normal usage, web or word it rarely happens, but when it does pushing on either side of the power button and holding down keeps the screen on. I have reseated the video cable, but did not know which cable supplied power to the screen and the alien light. When trying to reinstall the new video card drivers the machine blue screened. Will try again after work.

Query

Which cable provides power to the screen and light under graphics load.

At the stage of going to dell support, but with another trip in a week it's bad timing if I can fix it myself.

In this photo, it's the cable near the left screen hinge that powers the display.

[Guest Alienware-Frank_L]

We could even get someone In-Home to help you with that, worst case, we will replace the screen assembly. Great picture

[Fry]

We could even get someone In-Home to help you with that, worst case, we will replace the screen assembly. Great picture

Thanks Frank, but luckily not needed. The cable in question was the one I had already checked and there didn't appear to be any damage visible that I could see. It turns out that it was a software issue not a hardware one in the end.

For feedback if anyone experiences similar issues don't jump on the hardware/screen issue conclusion too quickly. After reloading the video card drivers the issue has gone away. I am not sure how the drivers affected turning the screen power off under load, but so far the problem has been fixed. My laptop has been working well for the last week, although slower than I remember. When I get the chance I'll do a complete reinstall and it should clean any issues up.

[Brian]

Thanks Frank, but luckily not needed. The cable in question was the one I had already checked and there didn't appear to be any damage visible that I could see. It turns out that it was a software issue not a hardware one in the end.

For feedback if anyone experiences similar issues don't jump on the hardware/screen issue conclusion too quickly. After reloading the video card drivers the issue has gone away. I am not sure how the drivers affected turning the screen power off under load, but so far the problem has been fixed. My laptop has been working well for the last week, although slower than I remember. When I get the chance I'll do a complete reinstall and it should clean any issues up.

What's your computer configuration? If it's AMD video cards, then the drivers being the root cause is very plausible.

[Guest Alienware-Frank_L]

[MENTION=4614]Alienware-Luis_Pardo[/MENTION] Help here, thank you

[Fry]

Small update:

Computer specs

m18x (first release)

Processor: Intel i7-2960XM CPU @ 2.7GHz (came with the factory overclock)

Video: Inboard + 2x AMD Radeon HD 6990M in xfire Driver version 8.989.0.0

Crucial M4 SSD

Western Digital hard Drive (standard from dell)

16 or 32 (Cant recall of the top of my head what i decided on) Gig of HyperX 1866MHz RAM

Halfway through another trip away (note there is lots of flying involved, so vibrations might be a factor). Attempted to boot up the laptop and recieved 8 beeps. After previous searches (because I have had the same issue on another trip away I knew that it has to do with a problem with the video cards although it is noted that it is mainly an issue with Nvidia cards which my laptop is not using) I knew it the common fix would not work. Because it worked before I lightly dropped the laptop into my lap from a distance of 2 inches and rebooted. The computer restarted without any issues. This is why I initially thought it was a hardware issue. Half an hour later I lost screen power again. After a hard reset it came back and has been fine since.

The previous fix was to reinstall the video card drivers, but apparently that is only a temporary fix. And the first two attempts to reinstall the video card drivers also resulted in blue screens. I am not convinced the drivers installed correctly because a few games now have staggered frozen images. For instance the tab menu of Skyrim now flickers and Deus Ex in story videos will have 2 images displayed at the same time. Niether of these were happening when I first played those games.

My course of action is going to be a full reinstall to see if in the last year some sort of software glitch has corrupted the video and power of the laptop and to contact dell before hand within the warranty in case it only temporarily fixes the issue again. Can anyone think of anything else I can try? I won't be able to do the reinstal for a few weeks in any case.

[Fry]

Well after my last post the screen has gone unservicable again. The screen back light is not working. In other words the pixels are present but the white light does not come through. If I turn off the room light and use a flash light on the screen I can see what is there.

This occurred while starting diablo it happened and when it happened I noticed the following error. "graphics error" "an error occurred resetting d3d. Click ok to retry" when using my flash light on the screen

[Brian]

Seems like the display led had failed or you have a loose connection. The best course of action is to call Dell and get it serviced.

They'll send a tech down who will likely replace the display and possibly reseat your video cards since your system fell and you heard 8 beeps on boot afterward.

Sent from my GT-N7000

[Guest Alienware-Natalia_J]

Fry, send us an e-mail to [email protected] with your service tag, phone number and best time to reach you, include a brief explanation of the issue you are having, the link to this thread and my name (so I can follow up), and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

[Fry]

Sorry for the delay in responding again. The issue is resolved. I went through dell support and they were able to get a tech out with some new parts. Given all the travelling i was doing it was within a reasonable time frame. First they replaced the screen; this unfortunately did not fix the issue. I then did a complete reinstall of the system to determine if it might have been some software somewhere that was causing the problem. During the install the screen backlight dropped out again from a complete format and reinstall so I knew it was not software and it was not the video cards due to the part of the install (was running off of the mother board graphics). I called dell back up and had a motherboard brought out and installed by a tech which fixed the issue (additionally they replaced one of the video cards).

One note is if you need to replace a component of the computer make sure when you go through dell support that you ask for the part with all the wiring and processors in place. For example the video card had to be unassembled to get the gpu and heat sink added to the new card. It also meant that the tape for the wires was reused and there was no additional supplies in the package sent to the tech (ie no paste for processors)

[mw86]

Well that may work for now but they may need to come back and repaste the cpu and gpu if they were removed in the interim of it. If you find temps fine of course things could be okay but paste isn't reusable long term. Air bubbles that were not there before can leave areas not cooled on the surface of your processor. The techs that came out have always had a full toolkit themselves and thin syringes of single dispensed paste for my in home repairs. Im glad the main issue has been resolved. I guess it would help if for motherboard replacements if paste is included automatically. Usually all paste Ive seen were already applied and packaged to be ready. It was pre applied to cpu or gpu heatsink. Im glad it was figured out. For this model computer its easy and fairly fast for a repaste to be done on a cpu or gpu. Since its only bottom panel, touch panel, keyboard, lcd, palm rest and ready.

[Arbitrary]

I have a similar problem right now.

It sucks that I'm stuck in a different country (and not going away for some time) right now without an Alienware service.