One fixed, one down!

Post by **gmattson** » Thu Dec 30, 1999 12:38 am

OK! Got the Toshiba working fine, but Susan's laptop is acting up. It is a Compaq presario 1060. Very slow 2 year old machine, but did the job. Now, every 15 minutes the screen goes blank. Rebooting will bring the screen back, but 10-15 minutes later, blank she goes.

Any suggestions what might be wrong? Or better, how to fix it.

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GEM

Dakkon · Post by **Dakkon** » Thu Dec 30, 1999 12:49 am

George,
Sounds like the Advanced Power Management "APM" is working

Go into the control panel and click on the battery and adjust the setting as needed.
Win95 was known for its uh uh "APM" problems

My advice is to disable it and use the screen saver.

Post by **gmattson** » Thu Dec 30, 1999 3:13 am

Thought that might work Dakkon. Turned off the power mgmnt and it worked for about 20 minutes before blanking out. Any other suggestions?

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GEM

Dakkon · Post by **Dakkon** » Thu Dec 30, 1999 5:52 am

Didn't want to go here.
Looks like it's time to go into the BIOS.
You may have to disable the PowerManagement features in the BIOS.
Be carefull poking around in there. Something is putting the machine into a sleep state and the machine can't recover from it. Which version of 9x are you running?
Click on start -->settings --> control Panel --> then the system icon it will be like 95.xxxx.xx.xxx
Thats only if the BIOS trick fails.
Chuck

Post by **gmattson** » Thu Dec 30, 1999 11:07 am

Unfortunatly, I restored the computer to it's original state when I originally could not resolve the problem. (I should have checked with you guys first!) Anyway, I'm now running vs 4.00.950a. Before restoring the computer, I was running a later version of 95.

I tried to update 95 to 98, but had trouble. I was told that Compaq used a special version of 95 that didn't allow this update.

Meanwhile, I've removed the power management device as suggested by Tony. (No concern over screwing things up at this point!)

Going for breakfast. . . hope the monitor is still on when I return. Later. . . and thanks guys.

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GEM

Post by **gmattson** » Thu Dec 30, 1999 1:20 pm

Nope! screen dead. Rebooted and everything works perfect. . . for about 15 minutes. I keep rebooting and the span of time between blackouts decreases. Now it blinks and goes dead in about 3-4 minutes.

Everything associated with the power management system is removed. Is their anything in the bios I'm missing? How do I check the bios?

Dakkon · Post by **Dakkon** » Thu Dec 30, 1999 4:02 pm

On lap tops I've no real clue they are so different from machine to machine.
some are the "DEL" key others are a "F5" or something like that other have a disk that allows BIOS access. Check the owners manual.
Some Laptops can actually be totally ruined by win98 ie killed DEAD. Being it's a shrinking time frame sounds like the battery is dying? Is it plugged into the wall or running on batteries when the time decreases?

Post by **gmattson** » Thu Dec 30, 1999 4:34 pm

I was 'playing' around with some of the other devises after determining removal of the power mgmnt system wasn't helping. Apparently something I did suited the fancy of the laptop, and it is now running ok. Its connected to a power source (electrical). Been running now for over an hour!

Keeping my fingers crossed in Brockton.

Thanks for your help.
GEM
ps. Could there have been some kind of delayed reaction to the removal of the Power mgmnt system? I didn't remove any devices, but believe I checked a box involving current version of a driver...

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GEM

Dakkon · Post by **Dakkon** » Thu Dec 30, 1999 11:05 pm

George,
It's Magic a.k.a. Windows
You may have made the Windows Gawd happy with pulling 11% of your hair out over the problem

At least it's working.

RickLiebespach · Post by **RickLiebespach** » Fri Dec 31, 1999 4:23 am

George,
Is it safe to assume you've checked the screen-saver settings? One of them is a blank screen.

Rick