My screen is flickering on my Asus notebook

Hello everybody,

I'm writing on this forum because I want to know if I'm the only one in this case or not. When I bought my Asus A6Ja notebook in sept. 2006, it was working quite well, even better than my desktop computer in fact. But few months after, somewhere around february-march 2007, the screen began to flicker very strongly. Here's a video of what happened :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9kh5GEHkzc

At start, it was just flickering like this in the lower-left corner of the screen. The problem is that I ABSOLUTELY need my notebook at school (without it, I just can stop going to school, I'm studying in IT). So around the summer holidays, I returned it to Asus. They decided to replace the whole screen, it cost them around 500€. They bring it back to me on september, and after just 2 power up, the SAME problem started to appear. The same in very worse, the whole screen's now flickering and I'm back to school now...

What I mean by "flickering" ?
Several pixel-lines of the screen are switching from on to off, and/or moving from left to right, and/or changing colors. They do not flicker at the same speed nor at the same intensity, so the whole thing looks a bit like if the display was crypted.

Here's what I learnt :

• When I move the lid from closed-state to opened-state, the problem disappears but come back a few seconds or minutes later.
• It happens when there's bright colors displayed.. if I switch my Windows skin to a black one, the problem disappears.
• Heat could be in relation since the laptop is always overheated at 60° or 65°C (fans are working). I tried to put it outside, when the temperature was like 5°C, and the problem disappeared, but came back a few minutes later.
• The screen always start to flicker from the left side, then it grow form left to right until the whole screen seems crypted
• Switching the screen on and off does nothing, brightening up and down does nothing, rebooting doe nothing too...
• I tried using the Omega drivers for my graphics card, but this time, display was totally frozen and the colors seemed to be additive (i mean that, the longer the screen was frozen, the brighter the screen was becoming)
• If let things becoming worse without moving the lid at all, the flickering grows, and grows, and grows, until display becomes stable again but is totally shifted. Display starts at 2 cm from the left of the screen and 1 cm from the top.

So, what should I do ? What is the problem ? Which component is failing ? What sould I do with Asus since they seem to keep on changing screens althought it doesn't seem to be the cause.

I'll try to make a more recent video or the problem monday.

 

well, the failing component seems to be the graphics card try to load windows in safe mode using F8 key before windows starts, if the problem continues it's serious, if it doesn't try to underclock your graphics card if its easy

 

Hook your laptop to an external monitor, see if the same issue happens with the external monitor. If it does, it might be the video card.

Also, if Asus has already replaced a screen and the problem keeps happening...ask them if they can try to replace the video card or the motherboard altogether.

 

my screen did something similar when i installed the newest beta drivers. once i switched back to 158.45 with modified INF from laptopvideo2go.com the problem has yet to show up again. not sure what video card you have, but try using an older driver, or just try several of them. hope this helps.

 

Yep, that's what I did last year when there were monitors in the classroom, and the problem doesn't appear in this case.

I've got a Radeon Mobility X1600 with 256 MB of memory.
The drivers I'm using are already nearly 2 years old (Asus don't seem to find it could be a good idea to release more recent ones).

 

http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/mobility-xp.html

Here is the link to newer ones. Try these and see if that helps?

 

No, that's the first thing I tried, but official ATI drivers can't detect my graphics card at all. Neither the desktop or mobility ones. That's why I tried Omega drivers, but it was just worse. It looks like only Asus-made drivers can be installed on this computer.

 

Here's a video of what's happening now :
http://www.dailymotion.com/NykO18/video/5491365

 

That is very NOT normal.

The issue is very clearly to do with the LCD itself, not the GPU. It seems like there's some sort of signal encoding problem somewhere after it leaves the GPU, since it works fine on the normal video output.

Did they give you an invoice when you got the unit repaired? What did they change? Maybe they changed the motherboard when there's something wrong with the screen itself? Or maybe there's a loose harness so that it worked when they looked at it but didn't work as soon as you got it back?

Either way, it looks like you'll have to send it back to them.

 

Alex has a point. Maybe its the inverter for your laptop thats connecting your lcd to the motherboard.

 

Hi guys,

They didn't say anything to me when they repaired it. On the paper they gave me, it was written that they only changed the whole LCD screen, and nothing else. But as far as i'm concerned, I don't think the screen as anything to do about this, because it works quite well with dark colors and sometimes with bright ones also.

I'm going to send it back on november 3rd or 4th, but the last time I did this, it took them over two months to repair it.. now, I only have 8 weeks before I go to school again. I'm going to put a bit of pressure on them.

 

i also have a6ja not lcd still ok..

here's my suggestion, backup your data and restore the original windows XP recovery, press F9 during bootup if you still have the original harddisk partition..

now, your a6ja is now in factory config, if the LCD still shows some problem, return to asus for warranty repair, i think they should fix it for free if your warranty has expired

if the LCD doesn't show any problems, then, you have the video drivers might be corrupt on your old installation...

 

The orig post is quite old, not sure if the user is still around...

 

Yep, the user is still around. I just forgot to add a final answer to this topic.
In fact, I had to bring it back to ASUS (for the second time) with a large piece of paper sticked to the screen saying "THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE SCREEN ITSELF, YOU ALREADY CHANGED IT A FEW MONTHS AGO". Surprinsingly, this time they did not changed the whole screen (550€) but just the connector between the screen and the motherboard (150€).
Since this little operation, everything works fine, at last and I thanks god everyday for having taken (not sure about this formulation) a warranty extension.

 

150EUR?!? That must've been more than just the connector, maybe also the motherboard. That cable (it's called the LCD coaxial signal cable or something along those lines) is on the order of 10 EUR in cost.

Good it got solved though (and that you didn't have to pay those money)

 

we have fixed a few hundred screens and display related issues in our time. this is the first time i see a screen flickering to the beat of music. If i had to guess i would say the issue is in the data cable then the lcd board. moving or pressing on the screen does not alleviate or change the issue?

 

No, the music had nothing to do with the problem, even if it looks like that in the video. A few posts before this one, I explained that the problem is now fixed and that the "connector" between the screen and the motherboard was changed by ASUS. But indeed, pressure on the screen was changing the issue significantly.

 

Yes, probably a bad connection/interruption/short in the LCD signal cable. Anyhow the issue has been solved.