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    Acer Aspire 5000, Distorted display at start up?

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by Mikepags, Dec 31, 2007.

  1. Mikepags

    Mikepags Newbie

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    Happy New Year 08 :)
    I am new here [1st post] and am a PC geek, building my own desktops since the days of the IBM 286 :eek: So before I start tearing apart this Acer, maybe some can help me out.
    Intermittingly [of course :mad: ] when I turn on the unit, sometimes I get a distorted, broken up display. This includes the bios splash screen and Logo. A couple of times I would get the soft [self test] bios display but would break up after XP boots. After a few power off/on attempts the unit eventually fires up fine :confused:
    I connected a 17" CRT to the ext. video output, and got the bios screen to display, but would switch itself back to the Laptop distorted LCD panel upon Win boot :eek:
    Just today I got nothing [not even bios scr.] at power ON again.
    At first I was thinking HDD/ or video driver. But why NO bios screen. Any pointers would really be great. Thanks

    Acer Aspire 5000 stock, XP Home edition, 512 added for 1 gb ram.
     
    Mikepags, Dec 31, 2007
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  2. benx009

    benx009 Notebook Evangelist

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    hmm, well, first, i would recommend that you get official drivers for your video chipset (do you know the graphics chipset your acer is using?) i don't think this will fix your bios display problem, but it might do something for your windows experience (you never know :eek: )

    secondly, the reason the crt switches back to your laptop display upon the windows boot it because you don't dual screen support configured correctly w/ your laptop. assuming you have an nvidia card, and you have the right drivers install, what you should do is go to the nvidia manager in the windows control panel, and set up the second screen there. if you have some other card (Ati or intel), i'm sure that there's a similar way to do the same thing

    what may also be wrong is that your laptop's display is running at the wrong refresh rate. is there somewhere to change this setting in the laptop's bios or something??

    if all of this fails, then there's a good chance that your acer has a hardware problem and you would do well to return it to Acer and get one of these two R's: a replacement or a refund :D

    finally, welcome to nbr and a happy new year's to you as well! hope i could provide some help
     
    benx009, Dec 31, 2007
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