IFL 90 Black (blank) screen. Gpu or BIOS?

This morning I pushed the power button on my Compal IFL90 and everything worked fine. Except the display. Totally black screen, shining a light on it revealed no visual either. Scared me silly. The rest of it works, I can even hear the log-in tune windows plays so annoyingly well each time.
After a couple of times rebooting I pressed F12 and suddenly it did display. It worked fine for a couple of hours.
Since I needed to burn a CD I installed OEM Nero that requires a reboot. Shouldn't have done that. Never got back on. Pressing F12 does not help anymore. I did take the battery out of my IFL two days ago and put it back in yesterday. That might have stressed the upper part of the laptop body a little.

I've read a couple of reports on the Nvidia chips tonight, it looks like that could be it, thanks to my wife having a 6-year old Compaq that still works!

I have updated the BIOS to 1.19 a few months ago. Could that have anything to do with it? Then why would it fail only now, after so long?
Could that void my warranty that is still valid? I have it 1 1/2 years, warranty is two.
I actually wanted to flash 1.18 since 1.19 was reported buggy, but accidentally grabbed the wrong iso. It wasn't marked.

I'll go phone the store tomorrow...

Anyone have some info for me? RePaRaQu? Ayle? Zfactor?

 

Try connecting it to an external monitor or TV, and see if it continuously works.

What is your Graphics Card?

 

Thanks for the quick reply. I don't have an external monitor.
Would the TV work with S-video? I don't think I have one of those cables...

Graphics card is 8600M GT.

I need to turn in. Past midnight here. I'm beat.

 

Hmm, well, we cannot be sure of the problem without checking that. Maybe another friend of family member has one? S-Vid cords are often used on VCR and DVD players. Maybe Game COnsoles...

But it sounds like it could be a defective GPU, yours is affected. It may also be the screen, or connection to the display inverter. If its in warranty, contact the manufacturer and get it looked at/repaired.

 

Just hate to miss it for a while. And I'm slightly worried about that BIOS thing. I was actually planning on flashing it back to 1.18 because 1.19 was reported unstable, but putting it off because of the risk involved. The process scared the hell out of me first time. It shuts down kinda violently... And then it stayed on but didn't shut down anymore. after half an hour I hesitantly turned it off and back on again. Thankfully it booted but it scared me... silly.

Anyway, could the BIOS have caused this problem?

 

S-vid won't work until Windows has fully loaded. If the bios was corrupted it wouldn't have booted before. IMHO the probability is higher that it is the gpu that failed. Send it in for repair.

 

Thanks! That was what I needed to hear.
I'll get it to the shop as soons as I can.

 

Hi folks,

I'm actually having the exact same problem. I know windows is booting and I can screw around with the buttons and log in and such... however the screen is completely blank.

However, unlike this fellow's case, my laptop is no longer under warranty...

I looked with a light up to the screen to see if the screen was still displaying something but without the backlight, and I'm not getting anything at all out of it.

Any ideas on what to do (cheaply hopefully?)

Thanks

 

As advised above try to connect to an external monitor.

 

Sorry, forgot to include that, external monitor isn't working either.

I'm guessing this is probably a board level failure?

 

If anybody with same problem will change VGA and it'll help, this matter should be added to FAQ.