Screen goes black after closing video programs on battery power (ThinkPad R60e)

Hey everyone,

This is my first post here. I have a problem with my IBM Thinkpad.

I have a new IBM Thinkpad R60e that I bought three weeks ago in Hong Kong. From the factory everything seems to have worked fine. I installed some programs like WinDVD, WinAmp, and Windows Media. I also installed a few online games such as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and a few others.

I remember it was around the time that I uninstalled one of those online games that I received an error that said something like "cannot locate Direct3D" whenever I tried to load any sort of video application such as an AVI file or a 3D game. I installed the latest video driver updates from Intel. This computer uses the Mobile Intel 945GM/GU Express Family Chipset. Installing the latest updates didn't immediately seem to make any difference. I still got the error. I also checked the video card configuration and bios information and as far as I can tell everything looked correct. I'm not sure what happened with this error because after a few days it simply went away.

However, right after that error went away I started to get a new error:
C:\DOCUME~1\SHAUNA~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\WERf064.dir00\Mini032307-01.dmp
C:\DOCUME~1\SHAUNA~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\WERf064.dir00\sysdata.xml

Error Signature
BCCode : 10000050 BCP1 : E2A39104 BCP2 : 00000000 BCP3 : BF384DC5
BCP4 : 00000001 OSVer : 5_1_2600 SP : 2_0 Product : 768_1

After a few reboots this problem also went away seemingly by itself.

Right after the above problem went away I started to have the current problem. Whenever this computer is using battery power (as opposed to AC), whenever I open any sort of video application (AVI, 3d game, etc...), it's when I close the program (winamp, Windows Media Player, game, etc..) that the screen turns black and starts flashing if I move the mouse around. The screen turns black and I cannot see anything. The only way to get out of this problem is to either shutdown the computer by holding down the power button or pressing "Fn" and "F7" together which closes the video program. This issue only occurs when the Thinkpad is using battery power. If it's plugged into the AC then I can close the video programs without the screen turning black and flickering. Why would this happen when only using battery power?

Does anyone have any idea how to fix it? A week ago I bought the computer to the Lenovo/IBM service center on Hong Kong Island. The technician spent 7 hours tinkering with the computer. At first he thought it was a hardware problem. He attempted to replace the motherboard with a new one and also swap out the RAM. However, the problem was still happening. Therefore, while it could be a hardware problem, I'm led to believe that it's either a software or video card or power configuration related problem. I'm afraid that one of the programs or games I uninstalled a week ago may have deleted a necessary file or changed some important configuration setting. The technician said he's never seen this problem before and he was unable to fix it. He actually said there's "nothing else he can do for me to help fix it".

I guess these forums are my only hope...

Has anyone had any experience with this happening on a Thinkpad or any other notebook? Any idea how to fix it? I've tried searching the Internet and also these forums. I can't find the answer or solution. It's also difficult searching for it because my searches are vague, e.g: "black screen flicker notebook IBM" comes up with about a million results on Google, but none relate to my particular problem. Again, it only occurs when doing something related to video and only when the computer is using battery power. It's strange.

Shaun

 

Hello enthusaroo!

I recently had the exact same problem with HP NX7300 (same chipset as yours) when I installed the latest video drivers from Intel. I did some tinkering around and figured out that it was related to overlay video output and possibly some sort of battery saving technology.

It is not clear whether the problem is in the hardware or the software, but I found two other cases on these forums while searching for something else. It is definitely not limited to these individual laptops.

Anyway, install older drivers to fix the problem. As a matter of fact HP doesn't even offer newer than 4543 drivers for my laptop which are over a year old. I forced the install of the new drivers from Intel (couldn't install using the normal procedure). Seems like IBM has newer drivers for you, but they have the problem. Same for Dell it seems (another case on these forums).

 

Hey....can you please tell me which older version fixes this problem.

 

Can you please let me know which older version of graphic driver did u use to fix it and where to download it from?
Thanks

 

I found out the ans.
Please install intel 945 driver version 6.14.10.4704 / PV14.25
for windows XP professional - 32 bit with dell 640m.
check out this link for reference.
http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-009479.htm