Clevo X7200 barebone

I have this captioned system, built by some one in the UK. It is out of warranty. The builder is out of business. In the last few days, I am having issues with displays. I did the following checks:

(1) pulling out and inserting battery brought the display a few times. But this is of no use any more.

(2) I pulled out the battery and connected the brick to the wall outlet. It brought the display to life a few times. It works 50% of the time. Now this exercise is no use.

(3) I connected the external LCD through the DVI. I am not sure if the system is set to recognise this. Because, the external LCD does not show anything. I have never used the external display so far on this notebook.

The service manual does not provide a link for opening the display to check loose contact of the cable.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Srini

 

hi and welcome to nbr
im going to check the user and service manual so give me some time.

also check your email as message sent.

 

Thank you MrDJ.

The battery stays pulled out of the battery and the notebook is connected to the main power. The display coming to life or other wise is 50:50. This means battery was not an issue. It is probably a loose connection of the cables connecting the display or faulty display or the motherboard itself

I want to check if cable connections are fine. I have removed the plastic cover around the display by removing those six screws.

My next task is to move the covers protecting the cable. I guess the keyboards will have to come out.

 

when you tried the external monitor did you use Fn & F7 keys to toggle between the two screens. for some reason if you have sli enabled its advised not to use this (only goin by what user manual says).

all my links to the service manuals are dead now so im going to have to do another search

 

I did try Fn+F7 keys. I will give it a go again...thanks

I only have a single GPU...nVidia 460M...so...sli is irrelvant?

 

what is happening with the screen. is it flickering on and off or just stays on for a short time then goes blank. do you have any artifacts or lines on the screen.

not sure if this will help but its worth a try.
remove battery and mains and then take base plate of and remove the cmos battery which will reset the laptop. (you wont lose any data)

 

Battery is off the notebook. When powered to the main, some time it comes up normally. The rest of the time (say 50%), nothing happens to the display. It says blank. There are no lines, artifacts or faint images. Simply blank.

At the moment, I am trying to remove the keyboard to check if cables are connected properly (loose contact). I have removed the backscrews and following the keyboard removal instruction to take the LED cover module. It is too tough to remove.

I will also try removing and reinserting the CMOS battery. I reckon this would reset the bios to factory settings; so I need to reconfigure bios by entering setup....

 

It might.. I wish you all the luck

Ever considering using a HDMI stick to a external monitor?

 

Do you mean this?

Premium HDMI to DVI Cable Gold 2 Metre: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

Clevo has a 24 pin DVI connector, is it not?

 

I opened the keyboard+LED (with my anti-static wrist strap grounded to earth through the anti-static mat) and checked + pressed LCD cables besides dusting off with an air can. I did not clear the CMOS. I rebooted a couple of times; the display came back both the times. I still have not put the battery compartment back. I am going to leave it like that for a few days to see if the problem is fixed.

I am not sure if I should put the battery pack back; the notebook never comes up unless I switch on the power supply (with a battery pack in). I wonder if the battery needs replacing. I never work without the power supply on (as the battery does not last 30 minutes anyway).

Is there a battery compartment cover (without battery) available for purchase?

I will post further updates in the next few days about the display problem.

Thanks for your tip.

 

Glad to hear it sorta worked out.

I highly doubt there's a compartment cover without the battery available to purchase.

+rep MrDJ

 

Back to square one

Display blank....Fn+F7 did not help. Some times, removing the USB mouse and/or notebook cooler attached to USB brings up..Would removing/reinserting CMOS battery help...

Any ideas please?

thanks

 

they dont do a battery replacement cover for any clevo as far as i know.
it wont hurt doing a cmos reset so thats why i mentioned it earlier.

tbh i have no idea what it could be if youve played around with the ribbon cable and sometimes it works but not always. also strange how it stops after a short time. i could understand if you was moving the lappy around but if your not moving it then its a strange one.
if your also saying the screen comes back on when you remove usb device then sounds like theres a conflick with software or drivers somewhere.

also you can download battery care in my sig below to show how much charge your battery has left and if it needs replacing.

 

All my drivers are up-to-date. I have not installed any new software for months. The system comes up consistently after keeping the usb connections off at the boot. It is indeed strange that blank display problems are not uniform.

I plan to check for drivers update and clear CMOS this week. I will keep posted.

thanks

 

All drivers checked and are up-to-date. Pulled out and threw in a new CMOS battery, which is £1 anyway, today. System boots fine and the displays come up consistently in the last few days. I do not find anything unusual in the system performance, which works fine as before.

The only thing is it does not like if the USBs are connected (mouse and notebook coolers); I do not think it is a driver issue/software issue. Checked the Bios, whose boot order is BD-ROM and HDD. The USB is not specified in the boot order, which is probably the reason. I am not sure if they remained plugged in before. I thought they were.

Anyway, thanks for the tip, especially the battery care, which shows the battery does not need replacing. It appears it is fine for a few more years.

Cheers

 

your welcome.
another thought. have you got the mouse and cooler plugged directly into the lappy or are you using a 4 way hub and most importantly is it mains powered.
it could be theres too much of a drain on the usb's but if you used a powered hub it might help. just a guess though.

 

Both are directly connected to the laptop USB and they draw power from the laptop.

Wow MrDJ, I think your thought is probably correct.! While the USB mouse's power consumption may not matter much, the notebook cooler might. I will look around for a powered hub to connect the notebook cooler and mouse. I think it may provide stability to the laptop.

thanks.

 

only thought about it as ive got a 4 way but dont have it plugged into mains. never been a problem for me on drain but im guessing a cooler could be a big draw. hope it is that and it sorts it out finally.

 

I have grabbed this.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Uspeed-Back...computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1339769702&sr=1-1-fkmr1

Thanks

 

not seen that one before but hopefully it will sort you out.

 

Thank you MrDJ.

If it is powered to the mains (not that we have a choice with this beast), would you still leave the battery in its compartment or would you take it out and store in a cool/dry place? It is going to wear any way. The Core temps are about 60 C - 65 C under normal load.

 

ive learnt from my mistakes.
i always used to leave mine connected to my m860tu and within 11 months it was down to holding 25% charge. it was replace and when i know i wont be using the battery for long periods of time i remove it and after 3 years its still got a 98% charge. heat is the worst thing for these batterys so best to charge it to about 40% and then remove it.

 

We all learn from mistakes. Given its' battery life, the battery is hardly used. If I travel, I connect it to the power in hotel rooms and switch on! So, it deserves to be wrapped for storage in the fridge.

Cheers....

 

I finally figured the out boot issue; notebook cooler drawing power through the USB was the issue. The bios stopped showing "excess power or something similar" if the notebook cooler was connected while booting. I bought a USB extension and attached to the surge protect with a spare USB-UK plug cable to draw power directly from the mains. Problem solved.

 

so my idea worked. yay we like to hear this
glad its finally sorted.

im in trouble now with my m860tu

 

This worked for me as well lol.
I had some stability issues with my OC, but after reading you advice about unplugging the cooler, seems that I got my stability back.
I never thought this could be an issue, so kudos to you Mr Dj, and rep!

 

your welcome mate and thanks for the rep
strange how the simple things are overlooked. ive even taken my own advice and plugged my 4 way usb in

 

Yes, Thank you MrDJ!

I wonder if all notebook coolers draw power through USB. I am certainly going to leave a review of this notebook cooler. I do not see anyone lugging a notebook cooler around. There is no reason not to supply the power directly from the mains.

 

What happened your notebook?

 

with no help so far http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/672532-m860tu-boot-up-problems.html