Laptop Screen Suddenly went blank... Help Please

Hi,
here are updates of what i have tried:

I have tried to re-seat the rams.. even one by one (keeping other dimm out)...... no change

I changed the hard drive with a brand new one (i got one spare) it switches off the hard drive LED.. (but switching back to old hard drive gets it again continuously lit mode...).... don't know what does this imply??

putting a cd/dvd makes it auto run (i know because there are CD spinning sound) .. so with that can i conclude that at least processor/ MB is working??

but still no fan action..... may be that is the culprit?? is there something which prevent bios to run if fan fails???

I am unable to open it up so cant get access to MB battery.. does anybody know how to do that??

Please advise

Hi, I'm facing the same problem. Can you please update me how did you solve this? Unfortunately, I am outside warranty coverage.

Thanks.

could try checking the thermal paste on the proscessor. if it's heavily used this will take a pasting (appologies for the bad pun) and may need replacing. laptop proscessors tend to run hot due to the lack of available cooling/airflow and maybe hitting it's cuttout temp.

although what you said about the processor needing thermal paste is sometimes true, it is unlikely that it is the problem here. On all of the toshibas that i have delt with in the past, it is due to the switch that tells the laptop whether or not the lid is closed. This can be fixed in one of two ways (that i know if).

First is to figure out how your specific switch works. Some are simpally a little button that gets depressed when the lid closes. If this is case you can figure out how it is getting stuck or jsut break the button off completly (not highly recomended but will do the trick).

Second (the better method) is to search around in the bios of the laptop for a setting for what the laptop will do when the lid is closed. Usually there are options similar to turn off, hibernate, sleep, or do nothing. If you see this, change the option to do nothing. (note, your computer will stay on even after you shut the lid unless you speciffically tell it to shut down windows or hibernate or sleep.) If you do this and your screen still goes black, you may have a loose wireing job or a failing lcd back light.

Hi guys,

Thanks for the posts. I'm sorry but JemB is close while Nizzy# expects and resolves the Toshiba problem he faced. My problem is nothing do with the Lid switch as I can see the Laptop running, No POST, no audible beeps of any sort, no initial/BIOS display (completely black screen as if it is not powered) but Power button on and there is spinning activity if I insert a bootable/non bootable CD but no audible HDD spinning activity.

May be I missed to reinstate my problem stmt details in my last msg as I thought it is exactly same as Dabs. In addition to the above details, here is my craptop's config.

The piece of murky h/w I have is a PackardBell EasyNote W3333 (1.8GHz AMD 64bit Turion M32, 1GB, 80GB, ATI Radeon Express 128MB, 17" WXGA 1660x900) wired to a Dell Trinitron P770 monitor thru VGA out port to save LCD lifetime during docked mode)

Some of the points/symptoms to consider are:
1. The day when the display suddenly went blank, the last h/w operation I did was re-connecting the my DELL monitor's VGA card to the laptop as I saw a wave-bend in the top scane lines of the CRT monitor. I thought VGA is an asynchronous data port and should not cause any problem, so went ahead and re-connected it and then the display was clear without any bends. I do it numerous times to my office laptop when connecting it to projectors. Initially, I thought the primary display in my laptop display setting was CRT monitor and disconnecting would have caused the primary display settings fall back to laptop's LCD but that was not the problem since I can see the CRT monitor display was not lost and i got a very clear (no-bends) image once I reconnected the VGA cable.

2. The most recent software change the laptop undergone was BIOS upgrade from the laptop manufacturer Packard Bell's Notebook Support website (the update was specifically meant for this model precise to the least significant byte in model number)

2. Its a very new piece I have hardly used it for 2 months. I have not used it heavily, max continuous operation was 3hrs that too only once to watch a DVD movie.

3. The manufacturer has no known support in South East Asia region, where I reside.

I wish I had procured a Sony vaio rather for the same price from the same vendor. But then that vaio model didn't have s-video, 64-bit CPU, 1GB RAM, 17" LCD and now I realize why, but its too late

Thanks in advance for your support.

re Imdabs, if the earthing wire from the fan has become disconnected it could have this effect. unusual but i have seen it on several laptops, you just reground it to the case, the metal plate under the keyboard usually does ok. To get into case on laptops you normally have to pop out one of the plastic panels above(or below) the keyboard which comes out next, but i would have a look about on the net for a tech manual.
Sounds like different prob for Sonofagun, did it stop working immediately after the BIOS upgrade? if so then thats it. even with the right BIOS upgrade it can go wrong, in which case only a new bios chip(identical) or a 'hot swap' could fix it. i'd always advise never to run a BIOS upgrade unless it's an absolute last resort, too easy to get wrong and you only get one go! if it's only a couple of months old, i'd take it back under warranty (and not mention the bios upgrade). good luck.

To JemB re BIOS upgrade:

No, it was working just fine for a fortnight or so after the BIOS upgrade.

But, It stopped working say 15 to 20 minutes after I re-connected the VGA cable to CRT while the laptop's kbd and mouse were idle. Basically it did not recover from power-saving mode even after I pushed the power button, so I had to press and hold to shutdown/pull the power plug (i don't remember exactly what I did). But when I retart again, It does not even show the BIOS/POST page and hung on black screen. Neither native laptop kbd/pointing device nor usb kbd/mouse works.

Thanks.

I also notice now that the CPU cooler fan does not work and there is no visible leak in the thermal paste or something i can notice. Reseating RAM did not help. I can notice the spinning activity if there is CD in a DVD/CD drive. I could not locate the BIOS CMOS battery to reset it.

Unfortunately, I could not buy Packard Bell's international warranty from the vendor as it was not available for India.

Thanks.

Hi,

Did you manage to get to the bottom of this. The symtoms have appeared on my Toshiba Satellitte 3000 X4.

Screen is almost completely blank (you can just about make about dialoge boxes etc if you look very close).

But other than that the computer seems to be working.

However, sometimes the screem works as normal?!!

PLEASE HELP?!?!?

Gabriel