Screen Flickering

[james227uk]

Hi,

 

For a while now I have had this problem with my laptop. Every so often, the screen does this weird flickering thing and the images gets distorted. There seems to be a pattern, whenever it seems to happen either of my 2 CPU cores are at 100% usage.

 

EDIT: Forgot to say that shaking the screen stops the flickering

 

1. Would this naturally cause this?

2. Will I need to take this to a computer store to get it fixed?

Edited December 13, 2009 by james227uk

[Star-Lord]

Make sure you don't have your refresh rates set too low, increasing the refresh rate decreases flickering as well in the case that it's not a hardware failure. If that didn't help keep reading.

**Does this occur the moment you power on your laptop or after being on for a while? If you have a spare monitor connect your laptop to it and see if the same effect occurs on the second display? If it does? *Take your laptop in for repairs or ship it to original manufacturer, if your still under warranty.

If it doesn't occur on the second display then this is likely to be some loose connection or interference with the internal flat ribbon connection. *In that case same as above.

 

**It could be over-heating?

[james227uk]

It mainly occurs after leaving it on for a while. I did think about sending it in, just seeing if anyone knew any solutions first. I will send it in soon. Changing refresh rate to 60Hz didn't fix the problem

[Star-Lord]

 

It mainly occurs after leaving it on for a while. I did think about sending it in, just seeing if anyone knew any solutions first. I will send it in soon. Changing refresh rate to 60Hz didn't fix the problem

It could also be over-heating? The worse case scenario would be a failed or clogged exhaust fan. Does your laptop have one of those mini exhaust fans in the rear? If so put your hand over it about 2 and a half inches away, do you feel the warm air? If not? It might be dirty and might need a little cleaning or it's just dead.

I use to have a similar problem with a Sony VAIO laptop and it turned out to be the interior fan had died. So after about 30 Min's of the laptop being powered on, it would start to show weird objects on the screen and shutoff. I manged to repair it by simply replacing the faulty fan. Anyways, just send it in and when you get it back, let me know how it went and what was the issue. So I can log it for future reference.

[Saget]

Which laptop? My Acer 5920 had nearly that exact issue, the screen went all white and flickering, and opening/closing the screen just a little helped that, but it was also what was causing the problem in the first place, so it got really unbearable with time. But it wasn't an overheating issue in this case; it was a manufacturing problem. Apparently the wire was bad or something, I don't know. The motherboard went dead before the problem could've been solved anyway.

My dad bought the same notebook from the same store and it also has this issue. Now they're trying to fix it.

 

I hope that's not your case though.

[Slamman]

My Dell Lat LCD repair had a problem of the full screen turning white, but not before the normal top to bottom scanning showed varying colored lines, intermittent and getting worse gradually. Images froze in place, then returned to normal when working, you can tell this is starting to take place when your mouse pointer freezes on screen!

 

When I repaired mine, the light went out, then I noted a broken wire and it was ultimately replaced with a back up screen frame, the same glass was used, but I replaced the back white panels and clear panels that reside in their white plastic mounting frame, this houses the back light and an inverter resides somewhere on that as well.

 

If you have a problem similar, I took video and still shots to compare, I'll have the stills on Photobucket soon.

[james227uk]

 

Which laptop? My Acer 5920 had nearly that exact issue, the screen went all white and flickering, and opening/closing the screen just a little helped that, but it was also what was causing the problem in the first place, so it got really unbearable with time. But it wasn't an overheating issue in this case; it was a manufacturing problem. Apparently the wire was bad or something, I don't know. The motherboard went dead before the problem could've been solved anyway.

My dad bought the same notebook from the same store and it also has this issue. Now they're trying to fix it.

 

I hope that's not your case though.

Same thing. I have an Emachines G720 (Emachines is owned by Acer???).

 

@Pctechguy

 

Yes it does have a exhaust fan at the back. Every so often warm air comes out. So it's working?

 

@Slamman

 

For me I can still move the mouse, but I just can see where I'm moving it with the flickering image. However It'll be interesting to see these stills.