The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Screen going black when plugging in USB HDD

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by evan2002, Mar 22, 2013.

  1. evan2002

    evan2002 Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    6
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hey all,

    Today my m17x r4 has started to make the screen change from normal to black a number of times when I plug in a USB hdd (same happened with two different drives). The laptop is plugged into AC power and the sound continues if I am watching a movie so I am not sure what is going on. Once the HDD is recognised and showing up in Windows Explorer it is fine.

    The only things plugged into the laptop is a keyboard and mouse.


    Has anyone experienced the same problem? or have any ideas what is wrong?

    Thanks
     
  2. radji

    radji Farewell, Solenya...

    Reputations:
    3,856
    Messages:
    3,074
    Likes Received:
    2,619
    Trophy Points:
    231
    Screen goes dark, huh? That's odd, it should only go dark if you plug in an external display and even then, it should bounce right back. Have you got an external display plugged into it? If you don't, see if you can get one, and plug it in and then plug in the USB hard drive. See what it does. Also, try the Fn + F6 key. Press it once and see if the screen comes back on. If it doesn't, press it again. That key combo forces the system to cycle thru it's different display combinations.
     
  3. Alienware-L_Porras

    Alienware-L_Porras Company Representative

    Reputations:
    3,658
    Messages:
    6,874
    Likes Received:
    969
    Trophy Points:
    281
    Really weird issue you got there. I would say that you should try a system restore to a date before the issue started.