[phil-key]

Is there a way to tell if a laptop display problem is caused by the onboard video card or the VGA screen? If I plug it into an external monitor would that do it?

A friend called yesterday about his daughter's Sony Viao PCG7F1L laptop. The screen appears to have died. He called a few places who want about $100 to diagnose the problem

They said a new screen cost about $240. If it's the video card, they said he should just junk the laptop. Would there be any other options?

[BG-0]

Try with an extrenal monitor plugged in (there should be some display switch key behind Fn (An icon colored the same as the Fn text on the Function key, with a rounded rectangle in between of two vertical lines)Will sometimes work only when you're already fully booted up), if that does not work, would definitely sound like a trashable laptop... Do you have any idea if they can boot it up, hear windows startup noises, etc? If it doesn't even boot, then it most probably is the graphics chip broken...

Even if it's the screen, I wouldn't recommend paying 240 $ for a part for such an old(ish), low-end computer. Just salvage the hard drive, get a new laptop, use an external enclosure to recover the data from the old hard drive, etc...


About the above mentioned key, can come in many other appearances too, here are a few: http://www.abacusrentit.com.au/image...top_screen.jpg

[phil-key]

Thanks for the advice.

We'll try hooking up to the ext display.

I'm guessing it's ready for the trash but at least he will feel better that we tried to troubleshoot it.