Display Problem pls help

hi guys

Few days back something happened to my notebook and even the Toshiba Center here dont have a clue.
I have a Toshiba satellite 1800 s814 notebook(having it for the last 3yrs).The Display is all gone.In other words i just have 16 colors for the default monitor which itself is another funny thing..
If i see the DEvice Manager i cant see any display adapters. everything else appears fines except the display adapter is not shown in the Device Manager.

I am using windows 2000 professional and the VGA is Trident Video Accelator CyberBlade ALi ..I also tried downloading the latest drivers from the toshiba web site and manually adding this hardware from the ADD/remove Hardware from the COntrol Panel..its not accepting it the latest driver..it would only install the default one that comes with windows 2000 prof ..
DOnt know what to do...

Thanking every one of u in advance for ur suggestions...
cheers
Don

 

Can you hook it to an external monitor?

 

no i cant...its horrible...no display adapter show in device manager and its running some default one which is 16 colours

thanks again for ur reply

 

My best guess is that is the either the GPU or the something on the motherboard has gone. In either case it would require a new motherboard to fix the problem. They tend to be very expensive to replace even if you do it yourself. There is a chance something may have come loose in there. Maybe you could get it checked out just to rule it out. A fresh install of Windows would tell you if it is a software problem.

 

u know thats wht i thought first...i have 2 OS on the machine..win 98 se and win 2000 prof....win 98 is working perfectly..its taking the Trident Video driver...i mean win 98 se has the full 32 colors..win 2000 prof is creating the prob..

i am sorry i shud have mentioned the win 98 se situation before...
thanks a lot for ur advise..at first i thought it was something in the motherboard too but when i did the switch to win 98 se its works fine...

cheers
Don

 

this sounds like the problem i had trying to run Win98 on my 2435-S255 (also about 3-4 years old) apparently for the GF 420 Go toshiba never came out with the W98 driver and i could not use any other drivers for the same card. I was never able to use win 98 after all. I know that 2000 has problems including lack of direct x upgrading, often enough XP driver will not work with 2000, maybe thats the case.

 

Well, then I would re-install 2k.

 

ooph a re install...cant imagine..the service packs..the hot fixes....so many...yes i think a reinstall is on the cards here...shud i go for Win XP professional or server 2003 r2 on a seperate drive....so many things to consider
thanks guys for all ur timely advise
cheers Don

 

at the toshiba web site..u get drivers for win 98 ,win 98 se,win 2000 prof,win me and win xp..did u check the web site..i got all my drivers from there..and it works fine 2....

 

well there is no 98 driver for my laptop, but im ok with that, by the way i dont think reinstalling the 2000 will help, but you could try upgrading to XP pro, i suppose you could make a small partition with XP system and see if that works

problem is once our computer go old, nobody wants to help us fix them, they would rather have us by new ones