Screen Fault or Virus On Laptop?

[macman81]

I have been given a friend's old laptop to fix. It's a Compaq Presario 900 running Windows XP. It was full of spyware and viruses. I have cleaned out everything I can find and installed proper antivirus and anti-spyware.
There is a fault remaining with the display, it has a vertical band from top to bottom about 1.5 inches wide just to the right of the centre, which flickers at a high rate. I thought this might be a result of a virus but it remains after I've cleaned up. Could anyone tell me what this might be, and is it a hardware failure which means that the screen will probably fail entirely before too long?

 

[breezer]

no idea, but what happens if you plug in an external monitor?

 

[macman81]

Hi Breezer, didn't realise you did computers as well as electrics?
Now why didn't I think of that? When connected to an external monitor the display is fine. So it has to be a hardware failure?

 

[breezer]

i "dable" but others here are much better than me.

 

[akthar]

I have been given a friend's old laptop to fix. It's a Compaq Presario 900 running Windows XP. It was full of spyware and viruses. I have cleaned out everything I can find and installed proper antivirus and anti-spyware.
There is a fault remaining with the display, it has a vertical band from top to bottom about 1.5 inches wide just to the right of the centre, which flickers at a high rate. I thought this might be a result of a virus but it remains after I've cleaned up. Could anyone tell me what this might be, and is it a hardware failure which means that the screen will probably fail entirely before too long?

Sounds to me like your screen is trying to display a resolution it cannot handle. Check the screen size, refresh rate and also the driver for the screen. It's unusual to have this issue on a laptop screen but the symptoms point to that or a faulty TFT Invertor or Display which may not be worth changing if the laptop is too old.

Hope this advice helps.

 

[topbloke77]

Id be 95% sure that its what you think it is.....it NOT a virus. (if it is, its very unusual to cause a band down the screen)

It sounds like a fault with the TFT screen. This is quite a common occurrence, especially with older screens.

I have seen the problem many times, sometimes it can be intermittent, but in most cases the screen needs to be replaced.


sorry just noticed this thread is 5 months old. The laptops probably in he bin now.

 

[empip]