Gateway CX210X Black Screen

[AustinMatherne]

I have a friend who killed her laptop, I'm not sure exactly how. Anyway, she replaced it, and now I'm trying to bring it back from the dead.

It's a tablet Gateway CX210X, and the problem simply is that when you turn it on the display does nothing but stay black. No BIOS, no nothing. My first thought was because it's a tablet, and has lived an abused life (keys missing, scratches all over the shell) that it was the display.

So, I hooked it up to my monitor via the VGA out, nothing... Black screen, doesn't post. I'm sitting there trying to figure out if this thing has an embedded GPU or not, I noticed that the display had gone into power saving mode. Which is normal, but I can bring it out by pressing the space bar. Which is also normal.

I'm figuring the GPU is dead, and from the documentation on Gateway's site it ether has "Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950", or an "ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 PCI Express Graphics featuring Avivo display technology".

Does anyone have an idea as to what might be wrong? Or know how I can find out which video solution it has?

Thanks,
~ Austin

 

[AustinMatherne]

Any ideas?

 

[Crono]

Assuming that it's an x1400, but has the Intel 950 chip integrated with the motherboard as well, you could try removing the video card and see if it defaults to the integrated GPU (again, using the assumption that it has both and the x1400 is the problem). If you have an extra mobile card, you can try replacing it with that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD6WDt-goiU

 

[AD&ExchangeGuy]

Hello,

This thread looks really old...but all the same I'd like to post that I am experiencing the exact same problem w/ my Gateway CX210X Tablet-PC as well. The VGA-out has always had issues functioning correctly. I think I've only gotten it to work a few times. At one point in time I thought I had it fixed simply by playing with the Primary\Secondary monitor function key and the BIOS, then it died again.

So...I have lots of ideas on what to try...but before I blindly tear stuff up I wanted to see what commonalities other affected users share in regard to OS\BIOS version\etc

I'm pretty convinced that its not the actual screen that has gone out, but rather a connection issue or video card issue possibly causing some kind of weird device power saving save state loop...

I'll be crawling a bunch of other forums for examples...somebody...please let me know if you have the same issue...I would like to compare scenarios...TY!

 

[Harvey]

I'm afraid your biggest problem is that repairing a machine that old will cost more than replacing it with a newer, faster and overall more capable machine.