Bizzare problem

[boredguy]

Alrighty, this one will be tricky...

I was on my Toshiba laptop tonight about to play a game when the screen went black (i was not touching the computer at the time). I tried a few things to get it back, but nothing seemed to be working, background music of the game was still playing at this time.

So in the end i gave up and held in the power button until it shut down, at this point i had put it down to a glitch or something.

This is where it starts to get weird.

When i attempted to load it up again it showed the Toshiba loading screen, then it went blank again. When i try interupting the startup the screen just goes blank. I don't know what is going on.

The game i was playing i have played many times before (so thats not it). And i am using windows vista.

Now i am assuming that this cannot be solved by actually turning on the computer, so i would have to open it up, would this be correct or is there some way to try and fix it up without doing so.

If i have to open it up i would have to get somebody to look at it because i am clueless when it comes to that. But the problem itself doesn't make sense, the problem can't be a loose wire or something because the screen does work at the start (with the loading screen), it would have to be a problem with the computer telling the screen what to display right?

Let me know if you guys have any ideas because this one has got me absolutely stumped, and judging by the cost to get it looked at i will probably be getting a new one instead of getting it fixed, and i really don't want to do that.

Thanks
Rob

[Rik from RCE]

Games put a lot of stress on laptops because of the amount of CPU time and the amount of ram that they require. As a concequence the laptop will use more electrical power and generate more heat.
These are the worst conditions possible for a component that is on the verge of failing.

Sometimes laptops will show bios screen still as it uses the minimum of all mentioned above.

The first thing you need to do is check your ram. If you have 2 sticks, try it with 1 then the other then try each in the other slot. If you have one stick of ram then you will need to get hold of another stick to test with.
You could also try downloading and burning a Ubuntu live cd from here - http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download select the try option and it will work entirely from the cd without installing anything to your hard drive, if that is able to load then you may well have a faulty hard drive or corrupted windows install.

If you have no luck with that, the next step is to take it to a professional for fault diagnosis and repair.

I hope this info is of use to you!

[savis1]

There is a chance of your OS getting corrupted from what you’ve mentioned. Try booting from CD or external HDD and uninstall that game take backup and reinstall the OS.

[caperjack]

not not likely a corrupt windows, the screen went black the games sound was still playing when user did a force shutdown.
agree with checking the ram

[boredguy]

Sorry it's been so long, i have been quite busy, anyway on closer inspection later on i found that the image was barely visible, the back-light had gone. That explains the music continuing to play. I am able to plug in a monitor as a temporary workaround until i get around to getting it fixed. Anyway that can be solved rather easily (now that i know the problem)

Thanks guys
Rob