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Question

Laptop Screen problem diagnosis: where to start?

Sep 14, 2017 6:38AM PDT

Not sure where to start on this one. Yesterday I reinstalled Win 7 with a new HDD on an old Toshiba L300 laptop. The installation went well except for twice when, before the boot options screen came up, the screen went black and then showed some colours in horizontal lines or even dots. This happened so quickly I didn't have the time to take a picture of it. It would almost look like one of those old failing TV monitors. I quickly hard booted the laptop by pressing the power button, rebooted and it went into F8 mode so I chose safe mode.

After the restart and in normal operating mode I have had no problems. This has happened only twice. Is there any way to run a free test using software to understand what the problem may be?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
I don't see a problem yet. Why?
Sep 14, 2017 7:01AM PDT

Because Windows doesn't have the drivers for your PC/laptop this is expected. You must find the instructions for chipset and video drivers for this model. Every model changes a bit so after a dozen you start to get the feeling of what a mess drivers and apps are today.

-> Also, Windows on a fresh install may do wonky things. Can freak out folk that don't do this a lot. What do I do? Reboot and if it doesn't happen everytime, move on to finish up the install.

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Windows vs Manufacturer drivers
Sep 14, 2017 7:50AM PDT

This is what confuses me. Windows installed all of its drivers when I clean installed. The original laptop was installed with Vista 32-bit.

Some drivers were supplied by Toshiba for Windows 7 64-bit which is the current os. Do I therefore need to install the Toshiba supplied chipset driver and display driver? I normally go by the motto 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' but in this case I worry that the Toshiba drivers pre-date the drivers supplied by the Windows 7 os.

Is it obligatory to install the manufacturer chipset driver or does the Windows 7 os take care of this?