White Screen of Death - any suggestions?

[swee'pea99]

My old Thinkpad seems to have had a fit - the screen went all wobbly, and when I rebooted, it came up completely white. Apparently this is called White Screen of Death, and is officially Very Bad News...but I thougt I'd post this just to see if anyone out there has any ideas. (Not too techy, please - don't start talking BIOS and jumpers or I'll cry.)

 

[ACS]

Quick elimination test. Connect to an external monitor.

If screen displays VDU sender unit gone.

No VDU motherboard issue maybe.

Still not good news either way

 

[swee'pea99]

Well, I've plugged in a monitor and it works fine. So I gguess that means the VDU sender unit? I've tried googling that, but not found anything...is that hardware? Is it fixable? Or should I just cut my losses? Seems an awful waste...apart from thje screen it seems to be working really nicely.

 

[HJ]

[quote name='swee'pea99']Well, I've plugged in a monitor and it works fine. So I gguess that means the VDU sender unit? I've tried googling that, but not found anything...is that hardware? Is it fixable? Or should I just cut my losses? Seems an awful waste...apart from thje screen it seems to be working really nicely.[/QUOTE]

Do you need it to be a laptop? If not just hook it up to a monitor and use it as a desktop...

 

[swee'pea99]

I was aiming to give it to my daughter. She's a pre-teen, so yes, a laptop is pretty much mandatory.

I did have a bit of something vaguely resembling progress -I googled a forum that said basdically, just hold Fn and then hit each F key in turn and see if anything happens...and lo & behold, when I got to Fn+F3, the laptop screen changed for the firt time from white to 'the right' desktop, except very juddery, and otherwise weird - 1" adrift from the bottom of the screen, that sort of thing....but now it's back to white again. It's dead isn't it?

 

[HJ]

sounds like it is dead, sorry...

 

[swee'pea99]

Ah well, nothing lasts forever. Thanks for your posts.

 

[scook94]

Sounds like you just need a new LCD display, have you tried ebay?

 

[swee'pea99]

If I could be sure it was the display, I might go that route - but I think it could be the video card or even the motherboard...there's a point where you start thinking about whether it's worth throwing good money after bad...

 

[scook94]

If it works on an external monitor likelihood it's the lcd. In a previous life I used to do service jobs for dell (*spit*) and the test they'd do to decide if they should send an lcd or a motherboard is whether or not it would display an image on an external monitor...

 

[swee'pea99]

Ah - interesting. Thanks for that. I shall log a search on ebay for 'spares or repairs' 570s.