Sager NP5792 - DEAD Screen, no signal.

I sent this report in to TechSupport - but I thought I may as well repost here and hear what the pro's think.

It's on a year warranty, which means I'm 4 months out of warranty. Disgusted if I have no recourse.

Below is my report:-


Hi TechSupport,

I have a Sager NP5792 which i've had no problems till now.

I left it running overnight it was running fine - the following morning the screen was blank.

Repowering several times, it's clear that the system runs up properly and actually boots into windows.
But the screen remains 'blank' the entire time. There is some flicker around the bottom of the screen as it boots up but no color just a little light and then it remains blank.

I have tried plugging into a monitor to see if I can get an output but the monitor cannot detect any signal.


This is the System :-
order xxxxxxx

1 Sager NP5792
17" WUXGA (1920 x 1200) "Glossy" LCD
Silver Trim
nVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX w/512MB - Will get new NP5793 Body
Intel® Core™2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz Processor w/6MB L2 On-die cache - 800MHz FSB
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
4GB (2 SODIMMS) DDR2/667 Dual Channel Memory (64bit Vista Required)
200GB SATA 3Gb/s 7,200 RPM Hard Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
Combo Dual Layer DVD +/-R/RW CD-R/RW Drive w/Softwares
7-in-1 Memory Card Reader (MS/MS PRO/MS DUO/SD/Mini-SD/MMC/RSMMC)
Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 4965 802.11a/g/n
Built-in Bluetooth Wireless
8-cell Smart Li-ion Battery
Windows Vista Ultimate - (64-Bit installed - 64 and 32-bit CD included)
Full Range Auto Switching AC Adapter
Standard Carrying Case
NO Dead Pixel Guarantee
NO TV Tuner or Intel® Turbo Memory (Robson)
NO "Medialess" Microsoft Office Software
NO Spare AC Adapter


I purchased around Feb 14th of 2008.

Would appreciate any advice and assistance.

Thank you.

 

What happens if you plug in an external monitor? What was it sitting on, and what was around it, when you left it running all night?

 

Hey,

I left it running on my computer desk, I've been using it for years and there is plenty of space around it for air etc. Plus the room gets very cold overnight and I don't see any chance of it overheating.

When i plug in a monitor and boot it up, I don't get anything. The monitor remains blank, and after a while hibernates with the message no signal.

I know the laptop is booting up into windows as i hear all the sounds. And when I slide my finger on the biometric reader, I hear windows go through the familiar login booting sequence and sound.

Cheers,

 

Just wanted to check the standard culprits - pick the low fruit, if you will - first. If you're not getting a video feed at all, it sounds like it might be a cooked GPU. Have you opened it up and visually inspected the GPU to see if there's any indication of overheating, like discoloration?

 

No, I haven't opened it up yet.

I tried to smell the vents to try and detect if there was a burnt out smell.
I think I detected something at the time - but it's hard to tell could just as may be the ozone heated smell that it usually has.

My gut is telling me it's the GPU - I'm just wondering if people have seen similar problems and it's NOT the gpu.

If it's a dead GPU and I'm out of warranty by 3 months what can I do?! It's really just disgusting that's the case.

By way of replacement machine - I've gone completely the other way. Now got a macbook pro 13" for everyday usage and software development. And at some point will get a Desktop rig for game playing.

Cheers,

 

Have you tried the fn+f7 combo to swap screens with the external plugged in (often need to be logged in for this to work)

 

Yeah I have this problem, which is why I suspect I need a new vid card. I believe my vid memory has fried, I had this error:

NMI: Parity Check/ Memory Parity Error

I rebooted a couple of times, the times when I did see a display, there was white lines vertical up and down my screen.

 

If it is the GPU, talk with your reseller (nicely and patiently, and work your way up the chain until you get to the owner, if you start off with a cust. service rep), and see if you can work something out. I don't know to what extent it affected the 8800M cards, but I do recall there were some manufacturing "issues" nVidia had with a lot of the 8xxx series cards that resulted in the GPUs failing prematurely (certain solder joints would crack under the strain cycling caused by heating up and cooling down). You might try to "explore" that issue with your reseller (and through them, with Sager) to see if, by dint of patience and pleasantness, and appeals to their general sense of fairness, you can come to some sort of arrangement that works out better than just having to buy a new card.

 

If you hear the windows sounds when power up the laptop then I guess your LCD back light inverter went bad or the CCFL back light burnt out.
If you have a similar screen try to replace it to see if it works that way.
Good Luck

 

Thanks, for the responses - I'm still waiting to hear from the reseller.
We'll see how it goes.

Thanks,