D901C - FX 3700M; LCD display black, external LCD works.

Hello everyone. I recently got an FX 3700M off of ebay to replace my aging (ancient?) 1600M, and I'm at wits end as to why this issue is happening. I've attempted all of the remedies I am aware of.

A bit about the video card - I took a blind leap as to which kind of card it was. The vBIOS that came with it was 62.92.36.00.07 which didn't come up on any google search I tried. The number on the PCB and in the vBIOS had the product number as 03980503, which would indicate it was originally in an HP computer. Based on the other threads I found, others have had success with either the native vBIOS or flashing it to the 280m vBIOS. I have had no such luck with either.

I have a rev 6 motherboard, 8GB of RAM, Core 2 Quad Q6700 CPU, and a Corsair SSD as my primary HD and two Seagates in a RAID 0 config, Windows 7.

The displays current behavior:
A) Computer boots up fine, displaying POST on external monitor.
B) Generic Non-PNP Monitor is listed as the driver for the laptop display.
C) The laptop display has power, and even can be seen illuminating slightly (when the lights are off). It appears to be powered, just not displaying anything.

I have...
1) upgraded to _22 system BIOS and H813 EC
2) installed the latest nVidia drivers
3) unplugged the power supply and battery and let it sit overnight (capacitor drain)
4) I performed a similar operation with the LCD cable (LVDS?)
5) Did a shorter capacitor drain, afterwards holding down the power button for a minute
6) Attempted to flash to a GTXm vBIOS and a Clevo vBIOS, both of which were unsuccessful in getting the LCD screen to come back on.
7) Attempted various other 3700M vBIOs, which were also unsuccessful, and a couple leading to a blind flash back to the original vBIOS.
8) Downgraded the BIOS back to 17 (I'll explain in a second).
9) Attempted to use various EDIDs to force windows into recognizing the display. These too were unsuccessful, even though the computer recognizes second screen (it just won't display it).
10) Used a Kubuntu live cd to attempt to diagnose the problem. Even in Kubuntu, the display does not come up, and under "Monitors" comes up as LVDS-1 not connected

I don't think this is the result of a bad card. POST successfully executes and the computer boots into Windows just fine. In regards to point 8, when I had first put the card in, it POSTed in the laptop display, but when Windows started up it switched to the same behavior. Once I upgraded to system BIOS 22 it stopped displaying POST on the display and would only show up on the external monitor. I downgraded to see if I could replicate the behavior, which it did. However, the BIOS only recognized it as a "nVidia VGA card", not a 3700M. It was properly recognized after I updated the BIOS back to 22. Also, when I replace my old 1600M back in, the laptop display functions normally, and even when I have both cards in with the 1600M in the daughter slot.

I believe it is a hardware configuration issue, but what I'm not sure of is the nature of it. Do I need a modded driver? Modded vBIOS? I read about a LVDS incompatibility with Lenovo cards - has this happened on HP cards?

Any suggestions or remedies would most welcome. Thanks

 

Apart from a few rare scenarios in getting Dell/Alienware cards' vBIOS flashed and working with a Clevo, Clevo boards generally are not compatible with other manufacturer's cards. This has come up on more than one occasion, and the prevailing wisdom has pretty much been the same.

You mentioned that you found other threads where users had success with a particular vBIOS. Where are these?

 

Most of them were from these forums, in fact.

Here, here, and here were some of the threads that kept coming up in searches. There were others, too. In fact, information outside of NBR forums was pretty sparse.

 

I have a radon 5650 card that because of the environment/system it came from does not output an lvds signal so no internal display.

where did the card come from?

 

The board number indicates it's from an HP, but the vBIOS was one that didn't come up anywhere else when I looked for it (62.92.36.00.07). I'm presuming it's an HP board, unless someone knows otherwise.

 

Two of those are identical, and the discussion seems uncertain about the HP card. A user there made mention that a particular BIOS might work:

But that's still open to determination.

 

Well, if it's possible, I'm determined to figure it out.

The thing that intrigues me the most was the difference in behavior before/after system BIOS updates. The card recognized the laptop display during POST and in Windows safe mode under the older BIOS. Again, it was only coming up as "nVidia VGA adapter" at that time. It was only when I updated the BIOS to the latest version that it began to completely bypass the laptop display and use the external display exclusively.

The card is physically capable of outputting to the laptop display. I believe something in the drivers, BIOS, or vBIOS is what's preventing the screen from being read, but i'm not familiar enough with modding any of them to be certain on how to make things match things up to get it to recognize it.

 

If you can get an unlocked bios it could be an lvds option is impacting it like bit width.

 

So far I haven't had any luck finding an unlocked BIOS that works with the D901c that has an LVDS option. Can't seem to find one to turn off video shadowing either - I'd like to eliminate that as possibility of the vBIOS not being properly read after flashing. A lot of dead links out there. I did try zeroing out the vendor info on the HP vBIOS, but that hasn't worked either. Might try it on Clevo vBIOS, see if that works.

 

Prema may be able to give you pointers.

 

Aye, and you have enough posts to PM him here on NBR, Dreadstone. Good luck!