Ati mobility radeon 9200 works only on external monitor

[daniel227]

hello!

could someone help me with this?
first of all, yes i have read many posts on similar topics and all of them ring a bell but none fits my problem. or then, i haven't found that one. so idecided to start a new thread...

the story so far:

i got this compaq presario x1000 laptop for free because the monitor is not working. actually it would display everything but without the blacklight so after a while i diagnosed that the inverter is not working anymore.

so now i am using an external monitor lg flatron 575lm, res. 1024x768. (i think the laptop itself has 1280x800).

graphic card ati mobility radeon 9200 (although everst says 9000), driver for the radeon 9600 series, have also tried radeon 9000 series, both work nicely on the external monitor)

everything was peaceful, until yesterday when i was playing with a program called smac (spoofing my comps mac address), had to reboot, and both monitors are working! but only until windows starts loading drivers, then it's again only the external monitor. though it seems that the backlight is active now, but the screen is black. immediately i tried to get the monitor working by installing and uninstalling drivers, wiping all ati drivers away with driver cleaner, try again... for many hours...

the result is always the same:
the laptop's monitor works nicely with vga (and the external too), but goes black when i install the ati driver. then the external monitor works nicely, all 3d accelerations and clear sharp picture and everything. and in windows display settings it ALWAYS recognizes the external monitor as the first, and the internal as the second and ALWAYS the internal is grayed out, inactive, can't change it to primary, can't expand the desktop onto it.

(btw, when i got the laptop i wiped it totally clean and installed winxp sp3, and all with the external monitor connected. had some trouble installing video drivers. never managed to install the ati catalyst driver suite - it always returned a fatal error: no video driver installed. haha! - but installed drivers manually instead. same thing now with my recent tries.)

there was a few variations, sometimes the standby option was grayed out when i switched the computer off and sometimes i got some garbled graphics on the internal monitor when i set the reolution of the external monitor to the same value as the internal monitor. and sometimes i'm not sure is the backlight not working or is the screen blank, but it always works in safe mode or vga and for a long time i tried all kinds of things without the external monitor, thinking that maybe windows or the driver defines it as the primary display, but always with the same results.

can anybody help with this please. thanks.

daniel

 

[rustybucket84]

Sounds like either the graphics card is failing or check the lid switch mechanism?

 

[gogogojason]

i believe .. if you right cllick on the desktop and go to ati catylist control centre.. then somewhere to screens or somthing and enable LCD + external monitor untill the LCD screen turns back on u shjould be fine.. Sorry i didnt read ur entire msg.. Im sleepy,

 

[gogogojason]

argh! this is the 3rd time i tried to reply.. I said, i think u right click on desktop , and ull see ATI catylist.. you should go to monitors or somewhere in there and select somthing like LCD + external monitor untill u find an option where ur lcd turns back on.. maybe there is an option to clone the same imgae.. .. im not sure.. im sorry i didnt read everything u said but it sounds familiear so i went ahead to say this.. because im sleepy

 

[daniel227]

hey, thanks for the answers!

no, it's not the lid switch mechanism because that was doing what it*s supposed to do until i disabled it in windows. now, if i depress the switch, nothing happens and when i release it the screen goes black for just half a second...

in what exact way could the graphic card be failing? i mean, it's working nicely with the external monitor...

@gogogojason:
i don't have the catalyst center installed because everytime i try to do so it tells me "fatal error: no video driver installed" - isn't that funny. so i installed the ati drivers manually.

could it be that it's windows itself that has somehow once and for all decided that my external monitor (which is LCD, btw) is the first monitor and therefore the internal monitor doesn't exist... remember i installed win xp with the external monitor connected, and now the internal goes blank everytime windows loads.

meanwhile, still the same situation as in my first request... the standby option is still grayed out in the switch off menu... weird

 

[brian81]

Daniel

no, it's not the lid switch mechanism because that was doing what it*s supposed to do until i disabled it in windows. now, if i depress the switch, nothing happens and when i release it the screen goes black for just half a second...

I've been trying to diagnose the same issue on my x1000....saw a BIOS update on HP website but it doesn't seem to function correctly when I run it. Did you ever find a solution?

 

[imrealbert]

i have the same issue i think with my dell laptop.
boots and screen works file and once windows loads its blanks, backlight is on, i attached a external via HDMI and trying to check update drivers etc... my only additional issue i found is the week befor this my white turned floresent green. i did install the ati control center and reduced gama and the white is now white once the driver control loads. and now this blanking.
i tired to uninstall all the ati stuff and see if i can get a old windows defautl, but win 7 never really seems to uninstall stuff