Member Avatar for pipbow

Hi guys my laptop is a patriot and my daughter was looking at bebo on the web.She said she just switched off the laptop and did not switch it back on until last night and all that came up was a black screen I can hear it loading up also if I look at it closely windows is there and everything is ok I just cant see anything.I connected the laptop to another screen and it loads up but once it goes past the windows xp logon even the lcd screen turns black .I went into safe mode messed around with the display settings and somehow I now have no start menu now.I think I might have changed something when I went into see was there any conflicts.any help would be great thanks.........

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If the internal panel shows BIOS/POST but goes black once Windows loads while an external monitor works, the problem is most often a display-output/driver or power-management interaction — less commonly a backlight/inverter that fails under the full GPU driver. ’s Safe Mode changes that removed the Start menu can be fixed without jumping to risky steps like firmware flashes; try the lower-risk checks below first.

Practical checklist (try in order):

  1. Cycle the laptop display outputs with the laptop’s display hotkey (the Fn key plus the key with a monitor icon) to toggle internal/clone/external-only modes.
  2. From the F8 menu select “Enable low-resolution video (640×480)” (or Safe Mode/Enable VGA Mode). In that mode open Device Manager and either Roll Back or Uninstall the display driver; reboot so Windows uses the generic VGA driver.
  3. If the Start menu is missing, use Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) → File → New Task, run explorer.exe to restore the shell. To run System Restore from there use rstrui.exe. To open Device Manager directly run devmgmt.msc.
  4. If driver rollback helps, download and reinstall the laptop manufacturer’s video driver (not a random new driver) once the desktop is visible.
  5. Quick hardware check: with the screen “black,” shine a strong light at an angle on the panel. A faint image means the LCD is still showing pixels but the backlight/inverter is dead or its cable is loose; no image at all (even at POST) points toward the panel/cable. Do not open the chassis unless experienced.

If the above doesn’t fix it, boot a known-good live USB (Linux live CD/USB) to confirm hardware vs OS: if the internal works under the live OS it’s almost certainly a Windows/driver/config issue; if it doesn’t, it’s hardware. As noted, firmware or power settings can play a role, but flashing the BIOS is a last resort — back up data and try the software/driver and System Restore steps first.

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Member Avatar for ahihihi...

(Violent spyware/viruses can also cause these symptoms when you're daughter watching bebo..)

flash your bios to the latest ver..and then in the power settings in BIOS and in XP, turn off power management.. see if it works

Member Avatar for pipbow

(Violent spyware/viruses can also cause these symptoms when you're daughter watching bebo..)

flash your bios to the latest ver..and then in the power settings in BIOS and in XP, turn off power management.. see if it works

thanks ahihihi I will let you know but (not sure how to flash bios)

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