Having an ongoing issue with a laptop that I can't solve. Hope some of the tech gurus here can give some advice.
History: Customer of mine opened a spam email by mistake. Was worried that he might have a virus so gave me call. I was away for a few days, so I told him to bring it into a local computer shop and get them to look at it. They serviced the laptop and everything was fine for a few days. Then the problem started.
The Problem: Windows will load up correctly and display the desktop as normal. But as soon as you move the mouse, the screen starts to flicker black or go completely black. You have to wait and give it a few seconds before it will go back to displaying the desktop as normal. Sometimes it will go completely black as soon as you move the mouse. Other times it will only let you load up some apps and then randomly decide to flicker black. The thing is, it will only flicker black when you are in that program but will work fine in other programs. Let me give you an example. When I brought it back to my office to work on it, it started fine and I was able to open up Word, Excel, firefox etc. no problems. Then I went to connect it to my wireless and as soon as I clicked on the box to put in the password, the screen started flickering black. Waited it for the flickering to stop and tried opening up windows explorer to see was there anything downloaded recently. It opened up explorer, but as soon as the mouse went into the Explorer window, the screen flickered.
However, most of the time it doesn't even let you load an app. As soon as you move the mouse after the desktop appears the screen flickers then goes black.
Things to Note: If I connect it to an external monitor, it works. The laptop screen is still flickering, but the display on the external monitor is perfect.
What I have tried:
1. First thing I tried was a USB mouse. Didn't make any difference. Screen still goes black.
2. Then I tried an external monitor. And I used this monitor to remove the graphic card driver and install the most up to date driver from HP. And this worked. When I rebooted the laptop the desktop displayed as normal on the laptop and everything was fine. Loaded up programs, no problem. No flickering or black screens at all. Rebooted the laptop loads of time just to be safe. Tested it for a couple of days, then gave it back to the customer. Where it worked for 5 days before starting to flicker again.
3. When I got the laptop back, I updated the BIOS and reinstalled every driver chipset etc. Also installed the latest GPU driver from Intel. Again this seemed to have to worked. I had it for a weekend. Did the updates on Friday morning, tested it the whole weekend. But when I checked it on the Monday morning just before returning it to him, it started flicking again.
4. I have used DISM and Scannow to see was there any system files corrupt. But no errors were found.
Where I am at now: Ok, this is a really odd problem. In my time trying to solve this I have noticed a few things. I am nearly positive it's not a hardware issue. The screen never flickers when it's booting up or in safe mode. Because it works fine in safe mode, it must be a driver problem. However, no driver has worked. Or to put it more accurately switching drivers works for a while. But, it's even stranger than that. I don't have to change anything. If it started flickering all I have to do is to boot into safe mode then boot back into windows and it will work properly for a random length of time. If it's flickering and I force a shutdown by holding the power button down and then boot it back up again, the flickering will be gone and again it will work for a few days.
The only constant is that it seems to happen after you shutdown the laptop normally. So I have asked him to leave the laptop powered on to see what happens.
I am probably at the stage where I will have to bite the bullet and reinstall windows. Just hoping that maybe somebody here might have some suggestions to try out before doing that. Maybe there is something obvious that I have missed.
Thanks for reading
History: Customer of mine opened a spam email by mistake. Was worried that he might have a virus so gave me call. I was away for a few days, so I told him to bring it into a local computer shop and get them to look at it. They serviced the laptop and everything was fine for a few days. Then the problem started.
The Problem: Windows will load up correctly and display the desktop as normal. But as soon as you move the mouse, the screen starts to flicker black or go completely black. You have to wait and give it a few seconds before it will go back to displaying the desktop as normal. Sometimes it will go completely black as soon as you move the mouse. Other times it will only let you load up some apps and then randomly decide to flicker black. The thing is, it will only flicker black when you are in that program but will work fine in other programs. Let me give you an example. When I brought it back to my office to work on it, it started fine and I was able to open up Word, Excel, firefox etc. no problems. Then I went to connect it to my wireless and as soon as I clicked on the box to put in the password, the screen started flickering black. Waited it for the flickering to stop and tried opening up windows explorer to see was there anything downloaded recently. It opened up explorer, but as soon as the mouse went into the Explorer window, the screen flickered.
However, most of the time it doesn't even let you load an app. As soon as you move the mouse after the desktop appears the screen flickers then goes black.
Things to Note: If I connect it to an external monitor, it works. The laptop screen is still flickering, but the display on the external monitor is perfect.
What I have tried:
1. First thing I tried was a USB mouse. Didn't make any difference. Screen still goes black.
2. Then I tried an external monitor. And I used this monitor to remove the graphic card driver and install the most up to date driver from HP. And this worked. When I rebooted the laptop the desktop displayed as normal on the laptop and everything was fine. Loaded up programs, no problem. No flickering or black screens at all. Rebooted the laptop loads of time just to be safe. Tested it for a couple of days, then gave it back to the customer. Where it worked for 5 days before starting to flicker again.
3. When I got the laptop back, I updated the BIOS and reinstalled every driver chipset etc. Also installed the latest GPU driver from Intel. Again this seemed to have to worked. I had it for a weekend. Did the updates on Friday morning, tested it the whole weekend. But when I checked it on the Monday morning just before returning it to him, it started flicking again.
4. I have used DISM and Scannow to see was there any system files corrupt. But no errors were found.
Where I am at now: Ok, this is a really odd problem. In my time trying to solve this I have noticed a few things. I am nearly positive it's not a hardware issue. The screen never flickers when it's booting up or in safe mode. Because it works fine in safe mode, it must be a driver problem. However, no driver has worked. Or to put it more accurately switching drivers works for a while. But, it's even stranger than that. I don't have to change anything. If it started flickering all I have to do is to boot into safe mode then boot back into windows and it will work properly for a random length of time. If it's flickering and I force a shutdown by holding the power button down and then boot it back up again, the flickering will be gone and again it will work for a few days.
The only constant is that it seems to happen after you shutdown the laptop normally. So I have asked him to leave the laptop powered on to see what happens.
I am probably at the stage where I will have to bite the bullet and reinstall windows. Just hoping that maybe somebody here might have some suggestions to try out before doing that. Maybe there is something obvious that I have missed.
Thanks for reading