Gaming Laptop doesn't recognize its own screen...

[GentleFist]

I'm trying for hours now and it doesn't work...

I connected the HDMI cable to my laptop as usual but for some reason the picture didn't show up on the TV, i decided to restart and to my surprise the laptop screen stayed back. I assumed it's set on external screen for whatever reason and hooked it up to an external monitor via VGA and it worked. I kept researching but found nothing. I couldn't set it back to the laptop TV the laptop didn't show up it's own screen.

I noticed after starting up windows I could get a picture on my laptop with closing and opening it. And it would recognize that theres another monitor. But the resolution is stuck on 1024x768 and its in the upper left corner. And also after a restart it would be black again even after setting it to my main monitor.

So I'm pretty sure that finding a way to getting the right resolution wont be the solution to this since after a restart its set to the other output again.

I really don't know what to do and I also have A-Levels in a week.

I don't know how trying to hook my laptop to my TV as usual could result in such a fatal error.

 

[Trulen]

If you're running Vista or Windows 7, try using the "Windows Key" + P

I don't know if you know, but this switches between "Mirror screen on displays, display only, laptop only" and other options. But that MIGHT fix your problem, I can't promise you.

BUT, if you know about this, I apologize.

And if you're on XP, I got no fix for you without actually being there.

 

[Originality]

I encountered a laptop with a similar problem the other day. A friend's mum's client (she's a lawyer) showed her a brand new out-of-the-box laptop that she had been having trouble with, and it eventually got shown to me. The laptop screen was black, all the time. I connected a VGA cable and surely enough, it showed on the monitor, so I could go through with the initial setup, but even after everything was set up and all the drivers were updated, it still wouldn't let me output onto the laptop screen. I tried the Windows + P trick and the Fn + F5 trick (for switching between display modes) but all it recognized was the external display - the laptop screen didn't even flash. I tried going through BIOS and device manager but found nothing.

That laptop got returned.

Back to your question, hooking up an external display changes the environment in which the laptop operates. Once it becomes aware that it's going to be used with two monitors, it sets up a kind of grey zone around the smaller screen to allow for it to match the size of the other screen. There are also a number of Windows Updates that, for whatever reason, reset that environment and typically make the external (usually bigger) display the Primary Display, which is the cause of most dual-display related problems. From the sounds of things, it's trying to output on the bigger display first and your laptop screen as an extra (when it feels like it).

Why it does any of the above... is beyond me (and it probably does more that I've not noticed yet). I've always found it irritating when the display setup on my media laptop breaks due to Windows Updates.

How to fix it... reinstalling the graphics drivers sometimes helps, but you should try and look through the display settings and set your laptop screen back to the Primary Display. That'll make it output onto the laptop first and then the externals if it feels like it. Usually (from what I've seen) this also causes a small corruption in the secondary background image (if it's bigger) or creates a black border around it, but it tends to work with me.

 

[Am0s]

yes indeed, try changing the display there should be 2 detected now, change it to your laptop screen for primary and tv secondary, thats an interesting idea about the laptop displaying to a tv and then going out of range for the laptop screen, anyway when you reboot your laptop you should at least see the post bios screen and such, before windows starts and the video driver kicks in for the OS.

 

[GentleFist]

its pretty similar to what originality describes

it seems the its in the vga bios settings or something like that
because even while booting it works only on external monitor i tried resetting to default but that doesnt seem to work

so i took out battery and everything, and waited for 1 hour and it actually solved part of the problem

now if i turn the laptop on it uses its own monitor while booting and in safe mode it even works correctly but booting in windows its black at first and when i close and open it it will show up again but not correct like i described in the first post

if i deinstall the graphics driver it doesnt show up at booting again and its the same problem outside of windows, before deinstalling its just inside of windows,

i really dont know how deinstalling the graphic driver seems to make changes in the vga bios to set it to an external monitor?

i assumed the problem doesnt lie in the graphic driver from nvidia but now it seems its a mixture of both this is really unusual

E:

sorry^^ its windows 7 ultimate~

will now try a driver from the acer site instead of the nvidia site~


E2: --> SOLUTION

Okay I resolved the problem, here the solution for anyone interested:

After a bit of thinking it was easy to find out how to solve the problem. I still don't have any explanation as for why it even occured, probably buggy programming.

Since the laptop screen didn't even show up at the boot screen it was obvious that it must be a bios problem. Resetting it didn't help. Hard resetting helped till I reinstalled my graphics driver and it went back to the same black screen again.

The conclusion was for some unknown reason my original bios file was fubar. So i went over to the acer site downloaded a bios file and flashed it. restart, install newest graphics driver. Everything fine.

thanks for posting people

 

[Am0s]

must of been a bug in the firmware and updating the bios firmware resolved your issue, lots of companies have many bugs in their firmware, ASUS are good at that I updated my firmware and then my sata drives would not be recognised by the bios and had to roll it back to a previous version

 

[GentleFist]

okay people today the same thing happened again...

i wanted to hook my laptop up with my tv as usual but it didnt changed and i already knew what would happen after a restart... but what else could i do?

but this time i cant fix it with a bios flash... i dont know why this sucks so extremely

the thing is if i take the battery out for an hour or so it works again but as soon as i restart or turn it on a second time it changes again

my question is why the fuck do the bios settings automatically change?

E: this is really driving me crazy~ without my laptop i cant do anything, i use it to watch movies, play games, to draw, write things, everything i do is digital... without my laptop i cant do anything this really sucks

 

[Originality]

Best course of action: send it back, get a replacement. And send an angry email to Acer. You could try calling Acer Technical Support, but unless it is a widely known problem to them chances are you'd just get sent round the mill before being asked to send it in anyway.

 

[GentleFist]

ofc i would do that but i have the laptop since some years now they won't do anything for me

and from experience i can tell that most times a laptop/pc gets sent in they replace the mainboard sometimes they additionally replace the harddrive and the graphics card because they dont know whats wront with it~

im serious^^ even last week i watched the list of parts exchanged in my uncles laptop but it was obviously a software error

E: topic still unsolved~