Black Screen

[AbrahamUS]

Have searched the threads on this forum to no avail.

After computer has booted, and a few programs are running, occasionally a black screen appears and doesn't disappear.

Have never found any spyware, viruses, trojans, worms, malware, spyware and PC is scanned everyday with the below products.

Only way out of the black screen is to put the laptop into sleep mode (function and F4 key) then when it is woken back up everything functions again.

Have an IBM Thinkpad laptop only 1 year old and the black screen has occurred around 3 times over that year. Other than that, no problems whatsoever with it.

My question is: As I am a stupid n00b, can anybody offer any thoughts on:

1: What is causing the black screen to occur/appear?

2: What the black screen is/represents?

3: Remedies/solutions to avoid this happening?

Running the following:

Avast Professional 4.7.942
Zone Alarm Pro 7.0.337.000
Windows XP Service Pack 2
Spybot - S&D 1.4
Ad-Aware 1.06

(Note: all above are fully updated with latest patches/updates etc.)

Apologies if this question isn't relevant, thank you all so much for your help. Much appreciated.

[DavidR]

After computer has booted, and a few programs are running, occasionally a black screen appears and doesn't disappear.

Only way out of the black screen is to put the laptop into sleep mode (function and F4 key) then when it is woken back up everything functions again.

Black screen crashes are usually associated with hardware, RAM, CPU, Motherboard, video card, etc. They are also the most difficult to detect and as such resolve. This however, doesn't seem to be a full blown crash as the only way to resolve those is by restarting, pressing the power button and the system boots.

So the only other thing it might be is your laptop power saving powering down the screen.

I have my system power the monitor down after 5 minutes of inactivity (I don't use a screen-saver), my screen goes black until I move the mouse of use the keyboard. Right click on an empty part of the desktop, from the pop-up menu select Properties, Screen Saver, Power button, check if you have a setting to turn off the monitor after a period of time, see image.

[AbrahamUS]

Thanks so much for you prompt reply DavidR, really appreciate that.

I did as you said and it appears I don't have the laptop power saving enabled.

Just wondering if these 'Black screen crashes' can occur as a result of too many programs loaded at once?

Not sure if they can occur as a result of overloaded usage of the system's resources?

Many thanks again.

[DavidR]

A lack of resources as a result of too many programs loaded usually causes a screen freeze.

You don't say what RAM or CPU you have, but again low resources usually cause 1) slow system response, 2) possibly some error messages, program not responding, etc. and 3) your screen freezes.

So unfortunately I don't see the black screen being as a result of too many programs running, though doing an audit and ensure that only essential applications run on boot, e.g. many media players want to start on boot and only when you click a media file.

I would have to say that having only happened 3 times in a year isn't something that I would try to chase down 3 times in a month or a week and I would be concerned. Is there anything in common with what you were doing when it happened ?

Check out this google search http://www.google.com/search?q=black+screen+IBM+Thinkpad+laptop and see if there is anything that broadly matches your symptoms.

[Lisandro]

Have an IBM Thinkpad laptop only 1 year old and the black screen has occurred around 3 times over that year. Other than that, no problems whatsoever with it.

Sometimes blank screen could be related to overheat... are the cooler of the laptop working well?