Acer Aspire 5630 Laptop screen/display problem

Pete Zahut wrote:
Paul wrote:
Pete Zahut wrote:
PS, just flashed BIOS from V2.90 to 3.60 and VGA BIOS from Intel
V1264 to V1377 - but no different.

If you run the monitor info program here, without the external monitor
connected, and with just the internal LCD panel, does it say the
panel is 1280 x 800 ? An EDID might be a way for the laptop
manufacturer, to provide plug and play info about the panel,
its native size and resolutions. Not having an EDID on some
I2C bus, is not the end of the world, and is not a defect.

http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/moninfo.shtm

Right Paul, we're getting into major stuff that I know nothing about here
mate )

Having run the moninfo program you mention above, there seems to be varying
info (mentions Philips, NEC, Microsoft - can't all have manufactured it can
they?) so I'll apologise now for making this post so long but I thought
you'd need all the info. Here's a "cut and paste" from that program:

snip

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&

LPL0000 (registry)

Monitor
Windows description...... Plug and Play Monitor
Manufacturer............. LPL
Plug and Play ID......... LPL0000
Data string.............. LGPhilipsLCD LP154W01-TLA1

Screen size.............. 330 x 210 mm (15.4 in)
Preferred timing......... Yes
Native/preferred timing.. 1280x800p at 60Hz
Modeline............... "1280x800" 71.250 1280 1328 1360 1440 800 802
808 823 -hsync -vsync


Thanks again for your time mate,

Pete


The second entry (LPL0000) looks like the info for
the panel (LGPhilipsLCD LP154W01-TLA1 15.4") and it
looks OK, because it is 1280 x 800. So that doesn't explain
it.

Paul

On Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:01:00 -0500, "BillW50"
wrote:

In ,
kony typed on Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:21:01 -0400:
On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 09:44:06 -0500, "BillW50"
wrote:

In ,
Barry Watzman typed on Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:55:00 -0400:
"Well after the external video jack (which is analog video), it
gets converted to digital and fed to the LCD display."

This is a driver issue, but that explanation of how things work is
wrong (although irrelevant to the issue). The digital video is
produced natively. The analog video is then produced from that.
Not the other way around.

But Pete (the OP), also stated on the 23rd that he booted up with :
"TuffTest Pro (http://www.tufftest.com/ttp01.htm) that is
self-booting, operating system independent and never goes anywhere
near Windows". So how can it be a Windows driver issue if the
problem still exists without Windows?

Becaues the display adapter isn't stretching non-native
resolutions to fill the entirety of the screen, instead it
is keeping the correct aspect ratio and upsampling.

And it is converted to digital, to analog, and back partially into
digital (a mix of the two). Same thing happens when you plug into an
external LCD monitor as well. As the pixels live in a digital matrix,
while the contrast is controlled by analog means.

It is not converted to analog and then back to digital. It
starts digital and stays digital to output to the LCD panel
built in, or is converted to analog for the output to an
external monitor.

Are you saying the brightness and contrast (also gray scales) are
adjusted digitally? How can that be? As it is an analog voltage that
controls this on every pixel on a LCD screen.

The distinction I was making was the output from the display
adapter, since we were trying to point the finger at one
subsystem or another.

There should be a digital input to the panel driver board,
which is separate from the display adapter as it is mated to
the panel it comes with. Display adapter typically uses
LVDS signals to transmit absolute digital values including
greyscales, then the integral laptop brightness and contrast
controls (if using buttons rather than software settings
which would instead alter the display adapter digitized
value it outputs) would effect the panel board. Between the
panel board and the panel itself, at the last stage I
suppose that may be analog but what are we considering the
significance of that to be in pinpointing the problem the OP
is seeing?

Active matrix LCD panels do not have a "contrast" adjustment. They only
have a brightness adjustment (and, sometimes, not even that). Only
older DSTN displays (no longer made for laptops) had a "contrast"
adjustment.


BillW50 wrote:


Are you saying the brightness and contrast (also gray scales) are
adjusted digitally? How can that be? As it is an analog voltage that
controls this on every pixel on a LCD screen.

I don't believe that it is either the cable or the panel (in the sense
that the panel is truly defective).

This is not a case where part of the panel is dark in the sense that
part of the image is missing; rather, this is a case where the entire
image is present but it's not filling the entire screen. That does not
suggest either cable or, in the sense that it's defective, the panel
itself either. Rather, it suggests some kind of configuration or
software (BIOS, DMI or ACPI) configuration problem.

Fixer wrote:
For christs sake stop trying to reinvent the wheel. The problem has been
solved he has the answer, its the panel or cable he knows what it is stop
confusing the guy




"Barry Watzman" wrote in message
...
Well, I take back what I said about it being a driver issue. It's clearly
a hardware issue. Any chance that it was flashed with the wrong bios or
that someone changed the LCD panel?


Pete Zahut wrote:
Barry Watzman wrote:
Can you post a screen shot of what the BIOS looks like?
Photo of BIOS screen he

http://s137.photobucket.com/albums/q...=lappyBIOS.jpg

Is there any chance that at some point someone replaced the LCD panel
with a different model?
Just asked my niece and she said no, it's never had a replacement LCD
panel.

Pete.

Pete Zahut wrote:
Thanks Fixer. The problem is still there when looking in the BIOS
and even when running a Linux LiveCD so it's not a Windows driver
issue. The problem is *NOT* there when viewing on an external
monitor, so thanks to your suggestions I'll try a new screen cable
first as that's the cheapest ) Thanks mate,

Pete

In ,
Barry Watzman typed on Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:25:42 -0400:
Active matrix LCD panels do not have a "contrast" adjustment. They
only have a brightness adjustment (and, sometimes, not even that).
Only older DSTN displays (no longer made for laptops) had a "contrast"
adjustment.

Whether you know there are there or not, the driver still adjusts the
contrast. My external monitor has a contrast adjustment. In my laptops
it is controlled by the driver adjustments. For example, this EeePC...
the contrast is set at 50% (through the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator
Driver for Mobile). And I can adjust it between 40% to 100% through the
driver.

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 701G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Windows XP SP2

"My external monitor has a contrast adjustment."

Your external monitor has a contrast adjustment only becuase it has an
analog input (VGA input). If you use a digital input (DVI), the
contrast adjustment has no effect on the picture. it is there only for
the analog input, it's part of the A-to-D conversion circuitry. This
circuitry does not exist in a laptop and a laptop with a TFT (active
matrix) display has no contrast adjustment anywhere ... not in hardware,
not in software (the driver).


BillW50 wrote:
In ,
Barry Watzman typed on Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:25:42 -0400:
Active matrix LCD panels do not have a "contrast" adjustment. They
only have a brightness adjustment (and, sometimes, not even that).
Only older DSTN displays (no longer made for laptops) had a "contrast"
adjustment.

Whether you know there are there or not, the driver still adjusts the
contrast. My external monitor has a contrast adjustment. In my laptops
it is controlled by the driver adjustments. For example, this EeePC...
the contrast is set at 50% (through the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator
Driver for Mobile). And I can adjust it between 40% to 100% through the
driver.

In ,
Barry Watzman typed on Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:51:27 -0400:
"My external monitor has a contrast adjustment."

Your external monitor has a contrast adjustment only becuase it has an
analog input (VGA input). If you use a digital input (DVI), the
contrast adjustment has no effect on the picture. it is there only
for the analog input, it's part of the A-to-D conversion circuitry.
This circuitry does not exist in a laptop and a laptop with a TFT
(active matrix) display has no contrast adjustment anywhere ... not
in hardware, not in software (the driver).


BillW50 wrote:
In ,
Barry Watzman typed on Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:25:42 -0400:
Active matrix LCD panels do not have a "contrast" adjustment. They
only have a brightness adjustment (and, sometimes, not even that).
Only older DSTN displays (no longer made for laptops) had a
"contrast" adjustment.

Whether you know there are there or not, the driver still adjusts the
contrast. My external monitor has a contrast adjustment. In my
laptops it is controlled by the driver adjustments. For example,
this EeePC... the contrast is set at 50% (through the Intel Graphics
Media Accelerator Driver for Mobile). And I can adjust it between
40% to 100% through the driver.

Well I think you are not thinking. But on the slim chance your universe
is different than mine. Here is where you change the contrast on my
EeePC 702.

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/2...0428111323.gif

Same is true under any Intel CPU based system. If you system doesn't
allow for this, I believe Windows Display Driver Color Management
profile can adjust the contrast as well.

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 701G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Windows XP SP2

On Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:51:27 -0400, Barry Watzman
wrote:

"My external monitor has a contrast adjustment."

Your external monitor has a contrast adjustment only becuase it has an
analog input (VGA input). If you use a digital input (DVI), the
contrast adjustment has no effect on the picture. it is there only for
the analog input, it's part of the A-to-D conversion circuitry. This
circuitry does not exist in a laptop and a laptop with a TFT (active
matrix) display has no contrast adjustment anywhere ... not in hardware,
not in software (the driver).


Most full featured video drivers do now have a contrast
adjustment, but it directly changes the digital output
values, not an analog voltage change telling the LCD panel
to do anything different than represent the digital values
the display adapter sends.

On Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:29:36 -0400, Barry Watzman
wrote:

I don't believe that it is either the cable or the panel (in the sense
that the panel is truly defective).

This is not a case where part of the panel is dark in the sense that
part of the image is missing; rather, this is a case where the entire
image is present but it's not filling the entire screen. That does not
suggest either cable or, in the sense that it's defective, the panel
itself either. Rather, it suggests some kind of configuration or
software (BIOS, DMI or ACPI) configuration problem.


Based on the linked picture, the distortion on the bottom of
the displayed image does make it look like more than just a
lack of the image filling the entire screen.

Fixer wrote:
"Pete Zahut" dont@bother wrote in message
...
Paul wrote:
Pete Zahut wrote:
Got the above laptop and it's just developed a problem with the
screen/display - there's a 65mm column at the right-hand side of
the display that's gone dark. Applications open up properly and
you can see the whole width of the app, but it doesn't go the
whole width of the screen - sort of full display but not full
screen if you see what I mean. Also, don't know if it's relevant
or not but the taskbar at the bottom seems to be twice as tall as
normal and isn't drag-able back to it's usual size - cursor also
distorts in this area. I'm not explaining it very well, so have a
look at this photo:
http://s137.photobucket.com/albums/q...nt=laptop1.jpg

At first I thought it may be a display driver issue but I've
uninstalled and reinstalled without success. I've also used a
program called #1-TuffTest Pro (http://www.tufftest.com/ttp01.htm)
that is self-booting, operating system independent and never goes
anywhere near Windows, but shows the same results, so I would say
that that rules out any Windows driver issues. Picture of that test
he
http://s137.photobucket.com/albums/q...nt=laptop2.jpg

Any ideas what's wrong and how to fix it?

TIA,

Pete

Have you done a graphics driver update recently ?

No - uninstalled and reinstalled driver to try to fix the problem,
but not updated.

It looks like a mismatch, between the actual LCD panel,
and what the software thinks it is driving.

Paul

Yeah, I'd agree with you there Paul - except for the fact that I've
even used the Recovery CD/Partition to restore the laptop to the
state it was in when it left the factory and the display is still
faulty even then.


Ok the way to tell if its hardware or software causing the problem
is when the machine starts to boot drop into the BIOS whatever it is
for your laptop, F2 for Dells , Del for some others but anyway
whatever it is for your machine. If the problem is there in when you
look in the BIOS its the LCD panel or Cable or Motherboard port. IF
it's not there then it's a driver/application, error. Of course you
could also connect it to an external monitor and again if its there
then its the grapghics card or motherboard port or software/drivers
and if its not there then it's the LCD or cable

Fixer, I owe you a pint - a £12GBP secondhand LCD cable from Ebay sorted the
problem. Thanks very much mate, and to all who took the time to try and help
)

Pete