A6VC boot screen headache

Upon booting my A6VC (A6000 series), the desktop screen view is split in 4 separate squares, as if my screen is divided in 4 equal small sub screens.

Very annoying, steps taken to repair:

-reboot, disconnect power, remove battery, remove wireless USB mouse, uninstall Nvidia 6200 driver- there's no real medicin although I notice that removing & reinstalling the Nvidia Gforce 6200 driver seems to work, albeit for a short period and then the trouble starts all over.

- I have the latest BIOS installed- I cannot reinstall it (or at least I do not know how to) for there's no newer BIOS available.

- Same for the Nvidia Gforce 6200 driver, most recent - which is quite obsolete- from 2005/2006 or so.

My gut feeling says something is wrong with the embedded Nvidia card (hardware error) and/or the Nvidia driver is not OK. Perhaps a BIOS problem but I cannot find any newer BIOS version and do not know how to reinstall the current (overwrite) the current BIOS.

Any ideas?

 

Can you get a pic of it? It's hard to know what you mean since I haven't seen this problem in my experience.

Also have you tried using the modded inf and drivers from:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/

Those are much, much more up to date. But you have to download the .exe, extract to a folder, and copy the modified .inf to that folder before running the installer. The .inf basically lets the installer know that your card is a valid card to continue installation with, otherwise it fails without the modded inf.

 

Thanks for your suggestion,I'll try the driver thing.

Point is that I cannot make a screen shot for this is the default "boot before XP login screen" which is already in 4 parts. I could make a digital photo and send it to you.

 

Yea that's what I mean, you can go to 'advanced' and upload a pic directly to the forum here... just make sure it's not a huge filesize ;-)

 

But how can I download the .exe file?
see this link: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/xp/174.74

I click on driver (top left) and then I got this message:
How did you end up here?
Please go back and try again.

I really don't know where to find the link to download this 174.74 driver

 

Ok I think I was still asleep. Need to download this driver from Nvidia.com don't I? Then copy the modified INF to the installation folder and run setup.exe? Right?

 

Wait, if it's split into 4 when the BIOS screen first appears, that shouldn't have anything to do with drivers, since that's not using a Windows driver at all to display. Have you tried hooking the system up to an external display to see if it happens on it as well? That would help narrow down if it's the GPU doing it or the LCD.

 

You might be be perfectly right. The 4screen view only appears after no BIOS start-up screen at all (dark).

Normally when the BIOS start-up screen is showing, the problem doesn't occur.

I'll try and see if the same happens while connecting to my TV.

 

Hmm. Does it start from the Windows loading screen forward or just in Windows itself? If that's the case, it could be a driver issue.

 

The trouble starts before XP login - see attached

 

Weird. You say you have no screens before the RAID one? Do you have a logo for your motherboard or anything like that before RAID comes up? Do you see an option to enter the BIOS by hitting F2 or Del? I've spoken to one customer with a problem like this recently and the factory suggested they needed to reseat their video cable. However, the issue with theirs was that the BIOS screen was divided into four and when the computer got into Windows everything went completely black.

 

No screens, no Boot options (F2 or Del) - all black- before I see the 4 cursors on the 4 screens. On the other hand, if we see the ASUS boot logo - then everything boots up normally.

It seems that removing every USB (wireless mouse, speakers) and/or Belkin Pre-N pmcia card, does the trick, eventually. But I cannot be certain- luck or?

 

Guys,

Probably found a solution.I've changed 2 quick startup settings back to default in the BIOS , making it last a bit longer- but since then the problem hasn't occurred. It is amazing. Thanks for the time spend on this!

 

That's quite odd. Thanks for letting us know. I'll keep that in mind for future reference.