Screen Keeps Going Black

OK, so I have a buddies laptop -- Toshiba S855-S5377 -- he had issues with the screen not coming up after the Windows 8 splash screen. So he brought it to me yada yada yada. I tried to restore everything and kept getting the same results.

Now, I used the Toshiba software to reformat the disk and installed a fresh version of Windows 8 (since it was doing it on the restore from Toshiba and he didn't have any backups) and the same thing.

I'm a college student with a Dreamspark account so I went on there and figured I would try it with a brand new copy of Windows 8.1, same thing.

On a fresh copy of Windows, the screen will come on let you log in and maybe after 1-5 minutes (guesstimating) the issue comes back. It lets me log onto the system through safe mode, however.

So I realize this is perhaps a driver issue perhaps?

Could someone give me something to try, I've done it all. I've even uninstalled the driver, it lets me go back into the regular mode and after a minute or so a sound chimes then goes back to black with no mouse.

Help?

a reply to: wwe9112
Connect an external monitor, and start the machine. If both screens go dark at the same time, you may have a motherboard(integrated graphics) issue. If only the laptop monitor goes dark, you may need to replace the screen, and/or the video cable.

Other thoughts. Turn off hibernation and screen saver before doing this, and do make sure graphics drivers are up to date. Get them only from the manufacturer of the computer.

ETA: Just as an addendum. Issues like this CAN be caused by BIOS and/or memory issues, but those are less common.

a reply to: Klassified

Wouldn't the motherboard issue still applied even if I was in safe mode? It works fine in safe mode.

a reply to: wwe9112

try updating bios and your graphics driver....did you install in the correct order?that can cause issues also.

a reply to: wwe9112
My mistake. I missed that it works fine in safe made. *smacks forehead*

In that case. You are looking at driver issues, or malware/virus issues. Or both.

I'd still turn off screen saver and Hibernation, and see if the issue persists.

Install Windows 7 ^

a reply to: wwe9112
I had this problem after dropping a recording mic on my laptop. The hard drive is most likely broken. On top of that, you'll have to reinstall whatever Windows is on it because OS crash is another possible reason. (Happened another time to me, on a different laptop.)

a reply to: wwe9112

Set the BIOS to factory defaults. When in safe mode verify the screen resolution and refresh rate match what the laptop screen can handle. Hook it up to a nicer external monitor and i bet it works, if not you may get an error that is more descriptive.I would imagine its the screen size or more likely the refresh rate. Whatever the default is is too high. Maybe the video card can't handle the default settings.

if you're still at this next week..?
safe mode & run the hijackthis utility
submit the report to www.help2go.com
(free service, iirc)

Turned out to be faulty hardware I took it to a friend of mine who is better than myself and he did whatever and said it's hardware -- the guy that asked me to see if I could fix it ended up just buying a new one in the mean time. Thanks for the help!