Z580 Black Screen issue - same behavior after warranty repair - warranty escalation path?

Hi Folks,

My brother purchased a Lenovo Z580 from Newegg around the beginning of October. It was working great for about 6-8 weeks, and then around the beginning of December, he reported having an issue with nothing displaying on the screen. He is a college student studying CS, so as you can imagine, this was of particular concern. He is running the pre-installed Windows 7, and he hasn't really done much aside from installing some school-related programs, games, and files.

Essentially, the laptop would power on, and the backlight would power on too, but nothing would show on the screen. I will try to get more details, but these links seem to be what he is describing:


Z580 problem with the startup (black screen) - Lenovo Community

Z580 black screen on startup - Lenovo Community

Brand New Z580 Ideapad Won't Start (Black Screen) - Lenovo Community



Rarely, it would eventually work and boot into Windows after powering it on after a cold boot. However, this is inconsistent.

Various combinations of removing the battery/power cycling (holding the power button with the battery removed)/running off of only AC power would not solve the issue. I even instructed him to swap/re-seat the RAM, and it did not seem to help.


I don't live near him, so I wasn't able to do any hands-on troubleshooting. However, it seemed like this would be an issue with the motherboard, video card, or with a component of the display assembly (i.e. ribbon connector). In either case, it didn't seem like something that would be remedied by simple end-user action, so since the unit is within the warranty period, I instructed him to send it to Lenovo.

He and my Dad obtained an RMA ticket online, and shipped the laptop to Lenovo a few days before Christmas (They paid the shipping). I believe the service center called my brother to verify the issue over the phone, which he explained. They received the laptop this past Friday, and upon first boot, it is exhibiting the same exact issue.


1) Does anyone have any suggestions on how to escalate this issue with Lenovo Support? Do they have any sort of cross-ship or pre-paid shipping label program?
I'd really prefer to avoid having my brother pay to shipping the laptop back, and then wait another few weeks. Would sending a video of the issue to Lenovo would help his case at all?

2) Has anyone seen this issue, and if so, do we know what the root cause it?
My brother thinks it's an issue with LCD ribbon cable, although I am not 100% sure. I am going to visit him in about 2 weeks, and although I could probably take apart the laptop to re-seat the LCD ribbon cable(s), I don't want to do so within the warranty period. However, if it is something relatively simple (i.e. having to manipulate RAM, HDD, Wireless, BIOS Settings), I would be comfortable trying it before sending it in again. The first link above references a BIOS upgrade, but there didn't seem to be anything confirming the BIOS was the issue.


Thanks in advance, and sorry for the long post.

 

Try connecting to an external monitor and testing if Windows will actually start up each time (by observing the image on the external monitor). If so, then it's probably a display issue i.e. the display periodically stops working, not that the system actually fails to start.

 

Thanks for the reply. I believe I had suggested this to my brother as an initial troubleshooting step, but I will ask him to re-confirm this (i.e. if it consistently can boot and display to an external monitor).