Solved Acer Aspire dark screen

STU9000

Member
My mother is having problems with her laptop, she said she could shut it down last night so unplugged it and left it over night, and today when she started it up everything was fine apart from a dark screen.

I have been on teamviewer trying to get to the bottom of it. Fn and arrow keys apparently adjust the brightness temporarilly but it just defaults back. I ran some windows check for solutions and it threw up this warning which indicates to me it could be a video card issue.mum.JPG

It also said something about Skype, so I updated that. I ran CCleaner and the SF_diagnostic tool. I have attached the zipped file to this thread. can anyone offer any insight to the possible cause of this because I'm stumped?View attachment 28273

She is using Vista.
 

My Computer

hAVE YOU TRIED , oops, to update the drivers?
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    Dual L5639 // i7 950 @ 4.0Ghz
    Motherboard
    Evga SR-2 // Gigabyte x58a-ud3r
    Memory
    12Gig Corsair XMS3 // 6Gig OCZ Gold
    Graphics Card(s)
    gtx 560 ti // gtx 260-216
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dual 22" // Headless
    Hard Drives
    OCZ aGILITY 3, 120Gig + Seagate 500Gig x 2
    PSU
    Silverstone da700 // Corsair 520hx
    Case
    Rosewill BlackHawk Ultra // Antec 900v1
    Cooling
    Twin CM Hyper 212+ // Noctua NH-u12
    Other Info
    Acer 8930 laptop with x9100...
Did think about that actually, but I'm trying to fix this from several hundred miles away. Which drivers, the video card? wouldn't windows update deal with that? What about the SF diagnostic tool?

My incline at the moment is to think it may be some failed/failing hardware, ie the back light or a loose cable inside. It's 7 years old and I had it open a coueple of years ago trying to find to bodge it so I could do a full reinstall.
 

My Computer

If it's hardware, it's most likely the inverter or back light, but I believe there's 2 lights possibly.

I do think you are correct on a hardware isue, She could connect it to a monitor or tv even, and check if it works. An S-video cable is needed for the tv.
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    Dual L5639 // i7 950 @ 4.0Ghz
    Motherboard
    Evga SR-2 // Gigabyte x58a-ud3r
    Memory
    12Gig Corsair XMS3 // 6Gig OCZ Gold
    Graphics Card(s)
    gtx 560 ti // gtx 260-216
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dual 22" // Headless
    Hard Drives
    OCZ aGILITY 3, 120Gig + Seagate 500Gig x 2
    PSU
    Silverstone da700 // Corsair 520hx
    Case
    Rosewill BlackHawk Ultra // Antec 900v1
    Cooling
    Twin CM Hyper 212+ // Noctua NH-u12
    Other Info
    Acer 8930 laptop with x9100...
Well I sort of deduced, correctly or incorrectly, that if her screen looked fine on my monitor through teamviewer then it's likely that there is no problem with the video card and that it's the back light or the inverter?
 

My Computer

Not sure a gpu issue would show through team viewer. Connecting to a external would show if its gpu or monitor.
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    Dual L5639 // i7 950 @ 4.0Ghz
    Motherboard
    Evga SR-2 // Gigabyte x58a-ud3r
    Memory
    12Gig Corsair XMS3 // 6Gig OCZ Gold
    Graphics Card(s)
    gtx 560 ti // gtx 260-216
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dual 22" // Headless
    Hard Drives
    OCZ aGILITY 3, 120Gig + Seagate 500Gig x 2
    PSU
    Silverstone da700 // Corsair 520hx
    Case
    Rosewill BlackHawk Ultra // Antec 900v1
    Cooling
    Twin CM Hyper 212+ // Noctua NH-u12
    Other Info
    Acer 8930 laptop with x9100...
Well I finally got to the bottom of the problem when I was down visiting. Turns out, when I said press Fn and left and right arrow keys she was pressing all three at the same time. I simply turned the brightness back up using Fn and >

That's all it was:-/
 

My Computer

Sounds good.. And a lot cheaper than a hardware replacement.
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    Dual L5639 // i7 950 @ 4.0Ghz
    Motherboard
    Evga SR-2 // Gigabyte x58a-ud3r
    Memory
    12Gig Corsair XMS3 // 6Gig OCZ Gold
    Graphics Card(s)
    gtx 560 ti // gtx 260-216
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dual 22" // Headless
    Hard Drives
    OCZ aGILITY 3, 120Gig + Seagate 500Gig x 2
    PSU
    Silverstone da700 // Corsair 520hx
    Case
    Rosewill BlackHawk Ultra // Antec 900v1
    Cooling
    Twin CM Hyper 212+ // Noctua NH-u12
    Other Info
    Acer 8930 laptop with x9100...
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