Laptop video problems

[Nell2ThaIzzay]

So out of nowhere today, my laptop display is all jacked up.

Basically, the colors get distorted, and the screen starts flickering like a VHS tape that's about to get wrecked.

Is this a hardware / video card issue?

It seems to be popping in and out. I.E. through the time it took to post this, it's flickering, messed up, and then "popped" back to normal, and started to distort again.

I believe that my laptop has a removable / replaceable video card, so hopefully I can just replace that instead of the whole laptop if that is the issue. But anyone have any idea what that might be?

I understand if my post is kind of vague, let me know if I need to give any additional details.

 

[Teelie]

Sounds like the video card is giving out but that's only a guess. I've seen video cards do stuff like that when they begin to fail.

 

[Tanin]

That is what happened when my video card blew.

 

[Kryptonian Warrior]

You could go into the Device Manager, uninstall the video driver, then restart your machine. Once restarted, Windows will automatically install the video driver. Maybe that will resolve the issue?

 

[Nell2ThaIzzay]

Well somehow, the issue -seems- to be resolved. The past couple days, I haven't had any problems. I don't know if it was a hiccup, or if it's the early signs of the video card dying, but yesterday and today I haven't had any issues.

 

[RetrogradeOrbit]

Difficult to track without more detail. Have you considered that it could be the screen itself?

The laptop should have a VGA, DVI or HDMI output for an external monitor to be connected. If you have access to one, try it and see if you get any distortion on that.

 

[Kryptonian Warrior]

Well somehow, the issue -seems- to be resolved. The past couple days, I haven't had any problems. I don't know if it was a hiccup, or if it's the early signs of the video card dying, but yesterday and today I haven't had any issues.

Yeah with video cards, there are no early signs of it dying. It either works, or it doesn't. I don't think it's a driver issue either, because if it was, it wouldn't just come and go like that. Unless there was a Windows update that automatically updated the video driver and now it's all fixed. You might want to check to see when the last Windows updates ran and if there was one for your video driver. It could be any number of things, but I personally don't think the video card, itself, is the problem.

 

[runawayboulder]

I think it may be the LCD cable is loose or not seated properly. Same thing happened to my laptop. I took the whole thing apart and disconnected/reconnected the small ribbon connector and haven't had the problem since.

 

[Nell2ThaIzzay]

Thanks everyone for their responses.

So an update.

It hasn't happened from the time of the OP until today. It happened tonight, and pretty badly so. So I decided to grab my HDMI cable and hook it up to the television.

While the actual laptop monitor was all scrambly, the display on my TV was not scrambly. Also, after maybe a minute or so, the laptop display itself "clicked" back to normal. So my screen is normal as of posting this, thought it looked like scrambled porn all of 5 minutes ago.

 

[RetrogradeOrbit]

Is sounding more like a screen or video card cable connection to screen issue to me.