Blank screen even before BIOS screen on boot
 

Hi all

Quite often when I restart my computer (reboot or turn down and then on), the screen remains completely blank, ie it does not even display the BIOS screen.
After a few trys (turn off, wait, turn on), it does work...

Sound odd, eh ?
It happens after having been under linux 2.6, on my Toshiba Satellite P25 laptop. I didn't note it after windows nor after linux 2.4. Video is a NVidia.
Now what I suspect is that linux is doing something weird with the ACPI. Linux 2.6 does switch my laptop off, which 2.4 doesn't, and maybe it puts the screen panel in a sleep mode out of which it doesn't recover on startup ...?

Cheers -- josce

Hello Josce,

I suspect this to be a hardware problem. Linux should not affect POST. The kernel is not even loaded until after POST completes. You did not state if when you are able to get a display you are able to log into Linux and in X without problem so I'll assume that you can. If it was a problem with you driver or XF86config you would not be able to get that far. Since the problem is intermitant it further strengthens this conclusion. One way to determine for sure would be to acquire a live CD such as Knoppix, slax, or Morphix and see if it boots. Odds are you will have the same problem because like the hard drive install the CDROM is not read until after POST.

I'm having the same issue, actually. SuSE 9.2 with kernel 2.6.8 with the latest provided kernel and ACPI patches, Compaq nx9500 with an NVIDIA card.

Moving the laptop to and from my docking station, after testing the use of a projector, seems to be causing the problem. I'm bringing it in to a repair shop tomorrow to find or rule out hardware issues. The external monitor, thankfully, works (for now).

The laptop is brand new and I'm hoping this is a hardware issue and not something I'm going to have to throw myself at over and over.

From what I have managed to ascertain, enabling suspend via powersaved or acpid causes this situation with NVIDIA cards on certain laptops. Doing a hard shut down (via the power button while the laptop is up and running) seems to bring the screen back to life on my HP Compaq nx9500.

I'm going to do some more digging, but for the moment, I've rolled back to the 6111 drivers.