Acer Aspire 8350G Unusual Problem

[dezireal2k13]

Good Day

Hope that to whom ever reads this it finds you on a great day and all is going well

I am a IT Technician for a computer company and we have a laptop that was left with us with a very unusual problems.

When you power up the laptop that primary laptop screen remains black but if you connect an external screen to the laptop. The secondary screen does show display so the laptop is in full operation no problem at all. So it left us with the assumption that it is a faulty LCD screen or cable.

I decided yesterday to do a test installation of windows using an external screen, I was installation Windows 7 Home Premium and to our surprise after the initial restart during the setup the primary screen switched on and gained Display which leads us to believe that the screen is working as well as any cables else there would be no display at all?

There are no graphical defects or artifacts at all.

I can even disconnect the external screen at this point and the lcd on the laptop still has display. I can switch the laptop off for a minute or so and start it up and the display is still working on the lcd.

if i leave the laptop off for a prolonged duration longer than 15 minutes and then switch it on, the lcd doesnt display anything at all like the initial problem we had. Plugging in the external screen shows me that it boots into windows and i can use the laptop no hassle at all but unless i reinstall windows and it reaches that point where it restarts I cant gain display on the lcd on the laptop.

In the device manager it lists that there are two display Drivers a Radeon 3400 that is working and the second driver is the Radeon 3200 to which windows reports that it can not start the driver. Code 10. I am currently downloading the display driver for the laptop to install and see what happens then. but it doesnt explain why the display will not trigger unless i repeat the installation process again on windows.

My question through this entire process, is there any other suggestions or advice anyone can provide me with that can assist me with troubleshooting or fixing this problem up.

I have updated the laptops bios to the latest one that is available on the Acer website.

This has me stumped beyond belief and would like to get to the bottom of this issue.

Thank you for taking the time in reading this and wil greatly appreciate any help or direction on this matter

Best Regards,
Dezireal

 

[ratedk]

I have run into similar issues with a HP dv series with AMD video. I wouldn't get an image on the laptops screen until I plugged in a VGA cable to the external port (sometimes just plugging in the VGA, with no external monitor connected to the other end, would bring the screen to life. It was very odd indeed.

The problem I was experiencing with the dv was due to overheating because of an extremely clogged heatsink/fan (and I would find out later that it was a design flaw). Unfortunately, the damage was done due to heat so the only option was to replace the motherboard, or send the MoBo away to have it professionally re-flowed. There are some backyard fixes that will * temporarily* fix the problem. Just Google "dv series video problem" or "dv penny fix' and there is TONS of references.

With the dv series, in particular, the failures were so widespread that it is nearly impossible to find a replacement MoBo that has not had the same failure and some band-aid fix.