Troubleshooting Laptop Display

Troubleshooting Laptop Display

By: Nathan Smith

Partner: Keontae Towner




Laptops are common devices that allow you to take the power of a desktop anywhere you go. They are especially common in the business and education setting. Having the ability to have the digital world with you anywhere you go is amazing, so whenever something is not working correctly on a laptop, it can become quite urgent to fix it as soon as possible. A very common issue hub for laptops is the display/screen. Today we will look at some common display issues, as well as how to fix them!



Black Screen: 

A black screen is one of the most common issues that can come up with a display. It also may be one of the most frustrating, as it leaves your laptop almost useless if you do not have an external display. There could be many causes for this issue including no power, faulty display cable, faulty motherboard, or a faulty LCD panel (Chan, 2023). One troubleshooting method is to check the power adapter and connection to ensure that nothing is shorted or unplugged. Another troubleshooting method is to check the internal display cable, however, this may take extra effort and knowledge, as this will require you to open up your laptop. 






Vertical Lines:

Vertical lines are another issue that many laptop owners have experienced. This issue is mainly due to graphic cards issues. Therefore, a good first step in troubleshooting this is to update your graphics drivers. Depending on your graphics card, the steps on updating your drivers may vary. Some graphics cards come with an app that will be auto-installed on your laptop that will allow you to update your drivers, while others can be updated through the WIndows Device Manager under “Display adapters.” You can also find your graphics drivers online by simply searching “[Your graphics card name] driver downloads.” Another way to troubleshoot this issue is ensuring your screen resolution settings are set to the recommended. You can do this by right-clicking on an empty place on your laptop screen and choosing “Display settings.” From here you can scroll down to “Scale and layout” and choose the resolution marked as “Recommended.” If none of these methods work, unfortunately that may mean that you have a direct hardware issue with either your graphics card or your display cable. You may either check these yourself if you have the knowledge/tools, or you can take it to a computer store to get support in diagnosing the exact cause of the issue. 






Stuck Pixels:

A final common issue with laptop displays are stuck pixels. A stuck pixel is when one or two of the three subpixels inside a pixel are always on (Yurlovskaya, 2023). This causes the pixel to be colored either red, green, blue, or yellow. This issue is usually caused by faulty transistors. With stuck pixels, there are three main methods to attempting to fix them. The first method is simply waiting. Sometimes stuck pixels will “unstick” themselves and work again, so if you are not in a hurry to get it fixed, the problem could resolve itself. The second method is using a pixel refresh software. These softwares allow you to move a window to cover the defective area and flash a series of colors (black, white, main RGB colors) over the stuck pixels. This method is also not 100% effective, but has a high chance of fixing your pixels. The third and final option, while not fully recommended, is to apply slight pressure on the stuck pixels. The thought process behind applying this pressure is for the pixel panel to reestablish/make contact with the transistor controlling it. However, this method is not recommended by most, as you run the risk of making the issue worse, as well as damaging your screen. 





Hopefully the above laptop display issues and solutions aid you in diagnosing and solving your own display problems. Thanks for reading!






References



Chan, Eric. “Troubleshooting Guide for Laptop Screens.” Gadgetmates, 12 Dec. 2023, https://gadgetmates.com/troubleshooting-guide-for-laptop-screens 



Yurlovskaya, Maryna. “Stuck Pixel vs Dead Pixel: How to Distinguish and Fix Them?” Skylum, 7 Dec. 2022, https://skylum.com/blog/stuck-pixel-vs-dead-pixel 

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