occasional screen blanking

[Jeff]

Running XP Home SP-2 on a Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop with a NVIDIA screen.

Occasionally, the screen will blank out for a split second and return.
Usually happens when doing something (close a message, delete, whatever) I
ordered it to do with the synaptics touchpad. It is very brief and only
happens once in a while. The video driver is up-to-date. There is nothing
related in the Event Viewer.

What could be causing this? Is there a way to find out?

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Running XP Home SP-2 on a Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop with a NVIDIA
screen.
Occasionally, the screen will blank out for a split second and
return. Usually happens when doing something (close a message,
delete, whatever) I ordered it to do with the synaptics touchpad. It is
very brief and only happens once in a while. The video
driver is up-to-date. There is nothing related in the Event Viewer.

What could be causing this? Is there a way to find out?

If the laptop is under warranty - call and explain to them what is
happening - otherwise - you may be seeing the preliminary to a video
card or screen burn-out. Did you get CompleteCare? Hopefully you
did - get them to replace the board and screen. If you got Gold
Tech Support - the call should even be quick.

Thought so. It's an old laptop my college daughter left when I
bought her a new one. No warranty anymore. Will trash it when it
finally goes.
Could it be just a loose video card that I could tighten back into its
socket?

Well, not really. The video card is integrated (as is most everything else)
into the motherboard.

There is a way to test and see if it might be the screen or the video card,
however.. Hook it into an external monitor.. It should have a VGA Out port
as well as the fn+F8 key combination to choose what mode it is in.. Then
repeat the process to get the monitor to "blink", but while displaying on
the external display.