Gray screen on laptop startup
August 5th, 2016
Removing the battery and putting it back in fixes the problem. Before this would happen maybe once a month, but now it happens more often.
The laptop is Lenovo G580 and is 3 or 4 years old. Any ideas what could be the problem ?
It could be the Graphics card on it’s way out..
Im betting its an LCD screen? If so its a problem with the lights that make the screen work, and there more or less dyeing on you (forget the correct term to describe it). I had a similar thing on a tv, but it happened after the tv was on for 20mins to an hour. Progressively got worse and worse, had to turn it off and on to “fix” the problem.
Your options would be to get some one to replace the screen, but you would probably need a second hand one. Or upgrade to a new one. Laptops have less off a shelf life then PC’s so depending on how much you used it 3-4 years is pretty good though, and may be time to upgrade..
Could be either of the above although I would suspect the video card, which in the case of a laptop is usually a chip on the motherboard.
Doing as shown here might help pinpoint the problem..
http://www.laptoprepair101.com/laptop-screen-shows-strange-wrong-colors/
Try plugging a computer monitor in. I’m guessing if the external monitor works during boot and operation then its not your graphics card and probably your lap screen. If the external doesn’t work then possible the vid card. Can you enter the BIOS at boot and see the screen?
Sometimes when I turn on my laptop I get a gray screen with vertical lines. It happens immediately, before the boot screen shows up, and the laptop doesn't respond then.
Removing the battery and putting it back in fixes the problem. Before this would happen maybe once a month, but now it happens more often.
The laptop is Lenovo G580 and is 3 or 4 years old. Any ideas what could be the problem ?
Have you had the charger replaced?
Thanks you guys for the replies.
Try plugging a computer monitor in. I'm guessing if the external monitor works during boot and operation then its not your graphics card and probably your lap screen. If the external doesn't work then possible the vid card. Can you enter the BIOS at boot and see the screen?
No, I can’t enter the BIOS when it happens. The gray screens appears immediately when turned on, before the boot screen and laptop doesn’t respond. I will try to plugin in a monitor when it happens next time and report back.
Have you had the charger replaced?
No, battery and charger are the original ones.
It could be anything. Have you checked Event Viewer?
Well..If you are saying when it happens the laptop stop responding..
It can’t be the screen..As you can even completely remove the screen and Windows will still loads..
Unless if you mean something else by not responding..
Thanks you guys for the replies.
Try plugging a computer monitor in. I'm guessing if the external monitor works during boot and operation then its not your graphics card and probably your lap screen. If the external doesn't work then possible the vid card. Can you enter the BIOS at boot and see the screen?
No, I can't enter the BIOS when it happens. The gray screens appears immediately when turned on, before the boot screen and laptop doesn't respond. I will try to plug-in in a monitor when it happens next time and report back.
Have you had the charger replaced?
No, battery and charger are the original ones.
Check event viewer as mentioned, although I doubt that Windows will log this, but you never know. To me it looks like it has something to do with voltages due to the battery thing, maybe a capacitor on the mobo, you have to have it sent for repair to know most likely.
If he cant see the screen how tf is he going to view event viewer
If he cant see the screen how tf is he going to view event viewer
it doesn’t happen all the time, according to OP.
If he cant see the screen how tf is he going to view event viewer
it doesn't happen all the time, according to OP.
I missed that, must be my getting old, good call.
Had a friend with the same problem… grey screen with lines. It ended up being the hard drive was on the way out and when it couldn’t be read completely on startup it simply hung and displayed garbage which I bet was the “Can’t find system” message all splayed out on the screen in a wrong format. Obtain a S.M.A.R.T. program or see if one is already on your system and look at reports for errors and run a few live tests if it shows no problems. The one I figured out would get a short test error BUT fail to count it about 1 out of 3 times. Did the usual, cleaned connections by unplug / plug a few times and measured voltage when drive was starting and running and load tested the power supply. Cloned the drive to another one and swapped out drives and problem was resolved. Just lucky it hadn’t failed completely in this case. All data was retained and transferred with no errors, as well as all settings and customization’s.
OK, today it finally happened again, so I can report back. Turns out that everything I wrote in the original post is wrong. The screen is not displaying a gray color, it powers up and since it’s such a low quality screen which is too bright even when displaying black I thought it was grey. There were no lines this time.
Also, it turns out the laptop is not frozen when it happens, it actually loads Windows normally, it just is not displaying any image on the screen. As you guys suggested, I used a VGA cable to connect it to my desktop monitor and it displayed the image normally. Then I pressed Start->Restart and it then restarted and displayed the image on the laptop screen normally too. I didn’t have to remove the battery and put it back in like I did previously.
If it displays and works good on your desktop monitor, then it won’t be the video card. Seems as though, your laptop screen is going bad.
If it displays and works good on your desktop monitor, then it won't be the video card. Seems as though, your laptop screen is going bad.
I now have another problem, often when I start the laptop Windows(7) does its “Windows repair” thingy, but it doesn’t fix anything, and next time I start the laptop everything is fine. This laptop is a total mess.
And since I can’t recreate the problems I can’t send it to a PC repair shop, because they can say whatever they want and charge me for it. I experienced that several times.