I've done it now...NO display on notebook.
The bios in my notebook was dated sometime in 2002. A search found a new one dated late 2004. Updated several drivers, did the new bios and now......NO SCREEN. :bawling:
It appears i got the wrong VGA driver. The puter is working, just cant see it.
The notebook can be accessed via the network, however cannot get into the important parts to make any needed changes. Boot.ini is visible, but cannot be opened.
As this is my last day home before flying back to work, i'm now getting rather desperate.
Tried adding a screen via a port in the back to no avail. (corrupt/faulty/incorrect driver).
Also managed to get all the way to administrator access, though clicking on any files from there on in, showed to be the host computer's files with the screen attached, not the notebook's files.
Any thoughts??
Jon
It appears i got the wrong VGA driver. The puter is working, just cant see it.
The notebook can be accessed via the network, however cannot get into the important parts to make any needed changes. Boot.ini is visible, but cannot be opened.
As this is my last day home before flying back to work, i'm now getting rather desperate.
Tried adding a screen via a port in the back to no avail. (corrupt/faulty/incorrect driver).
Also managed to get all the way to administrator access, though clicking on any files from there on in, showed to be the host computer's files with the screen attached, not the notebook's files.
Any thoughts??
Jon
0
Comments
reinstall.
Do you get a display when you try to enter the BIOS? If so, make sure that all of the video stuff in the BIOS is set right. Might be a bad flash...
What make/model laptop? You might be able to set the BIOS to defaults and get things going.
Just some ideas - Good Luck!
The beep codes indicate a VGA driver issue. After a bit of a break, the puter gives another beep, indicating it is working ok.
The bios flash confirmed, ok. Just done a couple of reboots, still no way to see what is going on.
If i can find a bios jumper or battery, would removing those help??
If not, what OS is it running? You may be able to turn on XP's remote desktop program with a series of key-strokes.
edit:
have you tried flashing back to the old bios?
We have tried making a boot disk out of a cd, which didn't work. (never done it before)
It appears the boot sequence is: 1 H/D, 2 CD. The floppy makes a noise in there too somewhere.
Jon
Make a boot disk on another computer to make it flash the laptop automaticly by editing the autoexec.bat.
lol...this is a little convoluted but...
Windows XP comes with its own remote desktop server software, but it has to be enabled. You can always try to see if it is enabled by default (don't think it is):
start menu -> all programs -> accessories -> communications -> remote desktop connection
type in the IP of the malfunctioning computer.
if it's enabled, you should get a remote desktop window. If not, you'll get an error.
but I must say that if you're not able to get into safe mode, or see _any_ display, It's likely that your problem will not be fixable from inside windows (unless the bios flash can only be done from windows). The only probable fix is to re-flash your bios by the method TheSmJ suggested.
If so, maybe a repair install will do it. If you can't boot from the CD try making a bootable floppy w/ cdrom drivers and run it that way.
If you get no screen at all, ever, I would say that prime is right.
There is NO screen at any stage. Once the notebook boots up, we can access it via the networked computers. Got access to a fair part of C:\. Just not where we need to be.
The bios appears to be ok, not the vga driver unfortunately, which is the wrong one.
Put on a ATI Radeon 7000 driver, instead of a 9000 one by mistake.
Still messing around trying to make a boot disk as we speak.
Next is to see if the local computer man has a bit of spare time to assist.
If not, i'll try persevering with the making of a boot disk and also try the "Remote Desktop Server Software".
Whilst i was typing this post, Sally rebooted it and got back in via the network only, still NO screen.
Jon
I know I'm grasping at straws, but I have seen it happen.
Good luck, Jon. I'm sorry you're having all this trouble. Hang in there.
Just to clarify for my/possibly others purposes... did this problem start happening immediately after you flashed the bios, or did you get into windows afterwards and then update the driver, causing the problems after that?
Sure got some good suggestions there fella's. All i can do at the moment is kill time till then.
Thanks again.
Jon
Just a thought.
edit, ah, it's gone to the shop?
Networking i managed to find my way up the ladder as administrator, but any files i try and modify end up being the ones in the puter with the screen. Grrr, so frustrating.
Sally has spent a lot of time away from bed helping me out. She is having a well deserved rest at the moment, so might catch up with a few chores she is unable to do. I'll get back to this in a little while.
ps. Did take notice of the possibility of a bad flash. Need to look into that a bit further.
Jon
I had an XP box that I was called to look at out in the field, and symptoms were like this:
No boot into XP in normal or safe mode. Safe mode boot hung with an attempt to load gagp30kx.sys (which is a generic MS AGP 3.0\8X driver, which can conflict with other drivers under some circumstances). This is an XP SP2 box. Here's what I ended up doing:
first, since boot had hung, and box had to be powered off, the partitions were marked dirty, or improperly dismounted, so a Recovery Console session was needed to get the partitions cleaned up so imaging could occur. Partition Magic will nto copy or move or resize an improperly dismounted partition, but after a pair of recovery console chkdsk run for each of drives C and D (two hard drives, single partition on each), and a recovery console exit command, both partitions were marked clean and PM 8.0 could work on partitions.
I had a copy of Partition Magic 8.0 and shrunk the existing partition to a minimal size. Then I copied the image onto a second HD as a logical drive partition, NTFS type, and made it so it was not bootable (it ended up being unbootable automatically in my case, once I was done making it a logical drive, and this was all done from a floppy boot set of PM 8.0). Essentially, this image became a salvage partition so things could be retrieved AFTER a reinstall of XP.
I had Acronis TrueImage 8.0, so I imaged the thing also, for safety. This was done from a CD boot session of Arconis.
Original XP partition was then wiped.
First HD was now empty, second HD had the original data from the second HD, which had been shrunk, still as a primary, plus an extended partition with a logical part copy of the original C drive on it. I extended the logical to rest of drive size, so HD could be used in full later by end user.
XP got reinstalled. Conflict turned out to be an SP2-driver-plus noncurrent chipset AGP driver plus video driver 3-way conflict, in this case, and might be something to note as well as something where the process can be used to recover important stuff after a reinstall with XP on same box. This has occured with both ATI and NVIDIA cards, BTW, mostly cards mfr'd within last two-three years, and involves a mess of DriectX and base chipset agp driver incompatibility with card and\or card drivers. Essentially, this is probbaly not all that happened here, but it is possible this is part of what ended up resulting also. Older drivers are not DirectX 9.0c compatible, in many cases, and older chipset agp bus and bridging drivers might fight the generic gagp30kx.sys in XP ALSO.
In this case, to get most of data right, if in fact there is no post, one might have to copy the data off onto a removable media like CDs, then restore the data made as work product later. I would do this if possible from an Acronis TrueImage recovery and backup bootable CD, which in fact CAN write to CD drives. IF BIOS is flashed badly, HD might have to be mounted in a different computer to do this. There is a chance that if BIOS is accessible-- possibility inferred from dragonv8 saying BIOS is OK-- that legacy USB support can be turned on and that TrueImage would then happily image to a USB HD or CD drive. The TrueImage bootable recovery CD in fact opens a Windows mini-session and then runs only itself inside that session, so it can access and use removable media drives of some kinds and work on backup and recovery on a box with an unbootbale windows AFTER the fact of the HD being corrupted or driver conflicted with video driver included in conflict scope.
If a computer is sent in for OEM (aka mfr) service, rarely does the HD come back in pristine shape with all old data intact. Instead, it most often gets restored to factory OEM specs which means user data is lost. In this case, an image is a very good idea if there is critical data on the box with corrupted video driver. In the case of a laptop, a 2.5 to 3.5 mount kit can be had from several suppliers that will allow HD to be transplanted and then an image made of the laptop HD. I would not try to access HD normally, or boot XP on the other box, unless the laptop HD had been content altered so it was made unbootable first. Instead I would image it, and make the image prtition as small as possible first if using Ghost or Acronis TrueImage, because both will want to make an image as big as original at recovery or partition recreate time. Smaller partition lets you have two parts on one drive after reinstall where in some cases if partition being backed up is full size of drive, it would overwrite the valid reinstall of XP. Thus, I use Partition Magic also for resizing and moving and converting tasks.
Plan is to get a new 2 1/2" 40meg drive, set it up from scratch, get a enclosure for the old drive and drag all the data from it, format it and she can be my backup drive. Good plan, just hope it can be done, lol.
I am now on my first laptop. At least i can still get online. An old Toshiba Satellite Pro 430CDS, Pentium 120 with 16 Meg of ram and running Windows 95.......It is very old, like me, but still performs, hehehe.
Sally offered me her Nice P4 3.2 notebook, but i'm happy enough with this old girl.
Just thought i would give you an update. Nothing will happen now till i get back home in 2 weeks.
Thanks again
Jon
That will likely not work. If the problem is in fact before you get to windows (bad flash), a new drive will not fix your problem. A test option is to put the current HD into another laptop, and you should see a display, indicating it is a problem with the first laptop.
I also had another idea. I know on my and my brother's laptop, there is a key to toggle the display (function f4 on mine, function f5 on his), and if you hit this at the wrong time, your computer will appear to have no display. Try pressing it a couple times while it is booting, or once you can see it on the network. If you can tell me what model the laptop is (sorry if I missed it in an earlier post), I can find out exactly what key it should be.
If you can find an older bios version, I'm sure you can (or if you can't, someone will know how to) make a floppy that will boot and autoflash for you. I also see that Tmod is around the forums some now, and he knows a lot about bioses, and may be able to help you once you get back.