Screen split into 6

I have an ASUS W7S with the 8400M G 128mb graphics card. I was watching a video online and then my screen suddenly froze and lines started appearing. Then it crashed and restarted, except this time with 6 screens (see pictures here: homepages.nyu.edu/~jsw318/fail.htm) (didn't make 15 posts yet so I can't direct link). They're all the same screen and if I try to printscreen it, it recognizes that its only 1 screen and not 6.

Tried system restore/reinstall drivers but no luck. I can get into safe mode just fine and with the graphics card disabled I can run my computer, except I'll just have 6 tiny screens instead of one.

What should I do? Don't know if format will work as I think its more of a hardware issue, and don't want to go through reinstalling programs again.

 

Link for you:
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~jsw318/fail.htm

wow that sucks
Try reseating the ribbon cable on the back of the LCD
Here is how:

Remove the small rubber pieces around the edge of the lid. Underneath them you will find screws which hold the lid together

Once the screws are removed, you may need to use a small flat head screwdriver to separate the two sections of the lid.
Their are small plastic snaps which are located all of the way around the inside of the lid, so you will need to use a screwdrver to free them.
Once the lid is apart, you will gain access to the lcd, and the inverter.
The inverter is situated on two small plastic dowels underneath the lcd.
You should check to see that the two wires on either end of the inverter are connected all of the way. (simply unplug and plug back in)
The wires are keyed, so they can only go in one way.

Then you need to check the ribbon cable on the back of the LCD.
to do this, remove the screws around the screen.
This will separate the lcd from the front plastic bezel. You want to get to the back of the lcd. There is a 1-1.5inch wide ribbon cable which plugs into the screen.
Unplug this cable, and you need to clean it.
Grab some rubbing alcohol and a few q-tips. put a little rubbing alcohol on the q-tip and than gently clean the male and female ends of the connector. When dry, reconnect the ribbon cable into the port on the back of the screen.
Than with some electrical tape, tape the cable down, so that it cannot be removed.
The ribbon cables generally become loose because of one of two things:
1) closing or opening the lid too fast
2) pushing the lid back too far (so the lid is like 180 degrees to the keyboard)

Once everything is reconnected, put the system back together and fire it up.

I hope this helps,

Good luck, and make sure the system is unplugged and the battery is removed before operating on it.


If this does not work, than it is most likely your graphics card malfunctioning. You should RMA your system if that is the case.

K-TRON

 

That has nothing to do with the ribbon cable. That definitely looks like the classic case of video card failure I hate to say.

 

Looks like video card failure to me, unless the video driver has decided to destroy itself. Since you said that this just happened while you were watching a video online, I would assume it's your nVidia 8600 series GPU that has malfunctioned, which is a common problem.

 

looks like it.

Try to reseat the cable as suggested. Try also to re-install the graphics drivers.

To check if your graphics is really faulty, connect your laptop to an external screen. If you get the same (faulty/disturbded) picture in both your laptop and the external screen, then your GPU is at fault. If the picture is fine in the external screen but not in your laptop LCD then your laptop LCD is at fault.

Best of luck

 

How does BIOS look? 6screens there too?

 

Bump.

I have this exact same problem too. When it happens, the bios does split into 6 different screens from startup. Half the time though, things work fine....

S

 

Yep, your best bet is to make sure that it is in fact your screen, and not your GPU. Connect it to an external monitor, as suggested.