Talk:Problem with garbled screen

Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replase desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed --DammitCoetzee 22:16, 28 September 2006 (CEST)

Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me.
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot.

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at this screenshot.

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X!

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem: I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Take also a look at this discussion and screenshot.

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update: It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 -- "more people" Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on IBM support site but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. (still no human reply, only an automated notice)

UPDATE/FIXED: the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in Kiev, Ukraine.

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.,

I have the exact same display problem with my ThinkPad A30p (model 265365U), vertical blue lines, garbled text when the machine is turned-on, but the distortion goes away after WinXP loads the display driver; the Windows desktop GUI look OK, BUT full-motion (overlay video) is severely distorted, AND instead of the 32MB onboard video memory, only 16MB is detected by the driver, 16MB of video ram is missing! this can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties, Settings, Advanced, Adapter; Memory Size should be 32MB, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

There are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU, which as we know is not heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot; this leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. The problem is definitely mechanical; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

IMO, there's a manufacturing defect with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge it? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not. Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies, there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. has your backlighting acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start... they're dieing.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's too bad IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars(cdn) + hard drive and memory upgrades.

Given all the problems I've had with my A30p and IBM's refusal to make things right, I can say with certainty, a ThinkPad will NOT be on my list when i make my next laptop purchase, even though I've owned several different ThinkPad models over the years.

I suspect the problems stem from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm, ie, after it's been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up, then when the machine is suddenly in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and slight mechanical stress on the delicate chassis (while in-transit) causes electrical/connection problems to develop, components become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

Whatever the source of the problems, the simple fact is this; the A30p ThinkPads are prone to heat-related failure and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display; when it works that is, but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our defective motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers. -- francis

btw, other problems with the ThinkPad A30p include well-known (and documented) issues with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself during large data transfers, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.