Acer Travelmate 4202 WMLi

Hi, I've done a full search of the acer forum (and the internet might I add) for anybody else with the same issue, one person did and decided just to give up and buy a new laptop. I'd like to get to the bottom of the issue as its obviously something that I think can be fixed!

First of all I spell out the crucial info.

Its an Acer 4202WLMi

My problem (I assume) is related to the on board graphics card. - Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950

Running Windows XP Pro (SP3 fully updated)

My problem is this:
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9416/12062009259.jpg

I'll explain this in words if the image is not viewable. Basically despite the laptop being a wide screen, the system detects the screen as a 'Digital Flat Panel' with resolution options of 800x600 or 1024x768. So I am left with a black bar down on the right handside as well as a blurred task bar.

I was worried the screen was failing, but even the black section is still backlit made me assume this wasn't the case.

I initially tried updating the drivers to the lastest version etc.

This did not solve the problem, so I reinstalled the old ones. To my suprise on the reboot the laptop started functioning correctly again.

Unfortantly this wasn't a permanent fix, as upon the next restart the problem reoccured, doing the above appeared to fix the problem again.

Becoming sick of having to do this I figured a full install might rid me of this problem, but it appears its not just windows related as even the bios screen is affected by the same issue. Even after a full format even the initial windows pre-install setup phase was still displaying the same problems.

Now reinstalled windows again fully up to date (I am now running on XP Media Center - as its the only setup CD I have to hand.) Its essentially still XP Pro though.

I'm at a dead end what else to do.

Screenshots as shown below are showing the computer running just as if it was on a standard ratio screen (i.e. not wide) but also without blur, which again leads me to think screen)

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/6196/devicemanager.jpg

But I'm confused as the problem could previously be resolved by doing the process mentioned before, this was functioning fine (didn't reboot for 3 weeks).


I wondered if anyone had any ideas on what I could do, as I have currently no rebooted the machine in 4 weeks since it sucessfully booted correctly (screen is 100% fine so long as I don't reboot it!).

If theres information I have missed please let me know and I'll post whatever is necessary.

Thank you.

 

issue appears to be a graphics card adapter problem. Try to boot the laptop up in safe mode.

if you see a full screen there then you know the issue is driver related. Same can be said for the bios screen. If you see the problem in either of those 2 places the issue could be hardware related.

 

Thanks, I forgot to mention that.

Yes the bios screen is also affected by this problem.

It being intermitent is what is confusing.

I did wonder if it was related to the cable running to the screen as I have heard of alot of problems with faulty cables being too tightly fitted (or close to the hinge. Moving it doesn't seem to make any difference though.

Any suggestions if its hardware?

 

Bump, would love to get to the bottom of this problem, in all other respects this laptop still works great and getting it working 100% again would be brilliant.

 

There is nothing that you can do , as home made repair .

Send it to ACER for repair , or buy an external TFT screen to operate it .