Virus effects on laptops

Anonymouse · 04-12-2006, 12:53

My laptop's started acting weird; the display is unstable for a while, then it seems to settle down. AFAIK there's nothing infecting it; I have Firewall enabled, plus the Internet access is via my router, so to the best of my knowledge it's never had anything more threatening than a tracking cookie. But are there viruses that can affect LCD laptop displays?

Or is this just a hardware problem? I took out 3 years' cover on the laptop when I bought it - God, it's coming up to 2 years ago now! Two years?! Where the hell did that go?

04-12-2006, 12:56

could be grx driver or it could be hardware

MovedGoalPosts · 04-12-2006, 13:11

To rule out the virus, use an online scanner from someone different to your standard A/V supplier.

Any chance of a loose connection - have you banged or dropped the lappy? As Zingle suggests any recent driver updates or patches been loaded that's doing something weird?

nffc · 04-12-2006, 14:44

Boot it into Knoppix or some other live CD based operating system, try it in the BIOS setup... basically see if the fault is confined to Windows or not.

If it's not, then it's possibly a loose internal connection or the inverter is playing up.

However it really does depend on exactly what you mean by "unstable" - care to provide some more detail on that?

Anonymouse · 04-12-2006, 22:34

The display keeps acting as if it's a very old TV with dodgy vertical hold - hence my use of the word "unstable".

But I've just now made a rather odd discovery: for no reason I can pin down, I thought I'd change the display from highest quality (32-bit) to medium (16-bit)...and the screen, which had been flickering madly, pulled itself together!

After I'd picked up my jaw and glued it back into place, I changed back to 32-bit. Perfect. I am in fact typing this on said laptop, and I get the feeling it's looking at me as if to say 'What?'

Earlier, though, I thought I heard something buzzing inside the laptop - I suspect either the graphics card's somehow come unseated, or there's something causing a short. Yet at the moment it's working perfectly.

I think I'll risk opening the thing up and having a look...after shutting it down.

TheNorm · 04-12-2006, 22:38

Can you try plugging in an external monitor? That should help you decide between a faulty card and faulty screen.

Anonymouse · 04-12-2006, 23:52

I did, and after cloning the desktop I am in fact looking at the external monitor now. The picture is as stable as anyone could wish for.

Hmm. Just one of those things, perhaps, something that only happens now and again? Still, you come to expect this sort of weirdness from Windows. I wonder if Linux users have this sort of trouble?

04-12-2006, 23:54

maybe not but they have to get there head round Terminal