Vaio CS11S/P display problem!

[carmishor]

Hello everybody,

I use a Sony Vaio VGN-CS11S/P. It has it's original Windows Vista installed with it's original drivers. Still:

- there are moments when my computer's display gets a lot of strange lines and pixels all over it and the only solution is to restart it.

OR

- there are moments when the image freezes and if I listen to a song it freezes at one point and keeps repeating that note and the only solution is to restart it

OR

- when I start my computer it changes all the colors of the display for 2-3 times until it comes to normal.

I don't know what to do anymore. And the thing that I cannot understand is why when the display gets all those lines/pixels all over it I cannot do anything but to restart it and when I see the "log off" blue screen of Windows it is a normal image?

Sometimes I get from Windows an error message that says that the display driver stopped working and that Windows has recovered successfully. But not every time my display crashes and the sound crashes along with the display I see that error message.

Does anyone know what might be the problem? Please help me... It's driving me crazy!

[nio_7]

Hi there!

It sounds like a real problem you have there...
Of course all these aren't normal and shouldn't happen in normal conditions.
Now, it's either a software problem (if you're lucky), or a hardware problem (if you're unlucky).

What comes first to me, is the Drivers of the Graphics Display Adapter.
Go through Sony update & support and download the driver available for your Graphics card for Vista Version (it's usually an executable .exe file) and install it. Now from a quick look i see that there is no Update for Graphic Card Driver available for your model but you can download your rpe-installed one which you van find under the "Originally Installed" link of the support page. There is also a Bios Version available that i recommend that you apply this update.

Here's your link!
http://support.vaio.sony.co.uk/downloads/updates/updates.asp?site=voe_en_GB_cons&c=0&s=VGN-CS&m=4571...

But you must know that:
1)In order to be able to install the driver (or any driver) successfully you must first turn off the User account Control of windows Vista. To do this go to Control Panel > User Accounts and on the bottom you should see an option "Turn User Account Control on or off" and turn it off. I think that a restart is needed to apply this.
2)After restarting, you can now find your .exe file of the Graphics card driver and Right Click on it and select "Run as Administrator". Then the installation should start.

After installing successfully, you can turn on again the User Account Control if you like.
But if you fail to do these 2 steps, you are more likely to have an Installation error when trying to install the driver.

You must also see if there is any Bios Update available for your model in Vaio support page.
If there is, download it and again use these 2 steps to execute the .exe file of the bios update.

If nothing of these fixes the problem, then i guess that you must have it tested by sony service.

[Blencogo]

Hi carmishor and welcome.

It is often a good idea to try connecting to an external, stand alone monitor.

If the external screen is OK - then you have a LCD hardware problem.

If the external screen has the same problem - then it is a problem with the driver (reinstall as nio_7 has suggested) or a graphics chip problem.

[carmishor]

Hi guys!

Thank you for your reply. I will try all your suggestions and after that I will come back to tell you what happened.

Thanks again and have a nice week-end!