Notebook Display issue feedback

[ell]

Hi, Heres my new dilemma, I have a Acer 5050 that chooses to boot to black screen, (video fine on external monitor, but in low resolution). Acer has a management program on it to control video, etc. I updated xp, updated ATI driver to new one, set resolution to medium,rebooted and video comes on notebook fine. Then I came back 2 hrs later and black screen again, video has now reset to low res on external monitor however. I set video to factory default settings in ATI control panel and rebooted, video fine again! Seems like if I leave it for an hour or two it goes back to black screen. Could this be a battery issue? I see the battery is very weak.

 

[JRDtechnet]

sounds like the inverter

 

[seedubya]

Why would the inverter affect the resolution?

 

[ell]

Why would the inverter affect the resolution?

No, its not the inverter, I just booted it up again to black screen, plugged in an external monitor and reset the display back to high res, rebooted and its fine- so weird, now if I let it sit an hour or so I'll be back to black screen on boot. power supply? should I run scandisk? I already did chkdsk. I did notice the fan was loud, but its not maxed out, only 40 processes and cpu load low.

 

[iptech]

Have you tried a BIOS update? It sounds like a power management issue.

 

[WareDat]

Not sure here I could be a mile off but does the notebook have onboard graphics? If so it could be a problem with your memory.

 

[ell]

I ran a quick memtest and reseated the ram. Seems fine. I think I'm making a little progress, I installed a few Acer driver updates and disabled so many boot processes. Now when it boots black I hold down the power button to shut it down. Then I reboot immediately and I have a normal display!??? I did notice the clock was lagging so I pulled the cmos for a few minutes then reinserted it. Still came up black on next boot. Good on next restart. My question is would a failing cmos battery cause the black screen?