Samsung Monitor Went Black

Hi everybody,

I have a Samsung SyncMaster 2253BW - 22" monitor connected to my Gateway laptop Model T-1623. I've been using it as an external monitor (so I have dual monitors running) in this fashion for about 3 years. It's worked great. But earlier, completely randomly, the monitor went black. It's still on, my preferences says it's still connected. I can drag my mouse and browsers to the external monitor. But nothing displays.

I'm running Vista 32, service pack 2. Drivers say everything is installed and installed properly. I don't believe it...I think there is a problem with the drivers.

So luckily I had already downloaded all of them from a previous problem and have them all on a usb drive. But this time that I'm trying to re-install the drivers the dialog box that pops up, the winzip extractor, won't let me click on "overwrite files without prompting" so it makes me click yes over and over and over again for every single thing. And then it eventually makes me abort because something is damaged.

Not only that but I tried going to Gateway to download new drivers, just in case, and they changed their download site. Now they make you download drivers for the entire T-16 series instead of just the computer that you need. But guess what? My computer, T-1623, is not included. I found this out after installing it and then eveything broke and I had to do a system restore. I looked at the documentation that came with the driver download and everything up through T-1622 is covered, just not the T-1623. It's like they said "okay, that's enough, anyone with a 23 can go f*** themselves."

How can I get my computer to display the picture on the external again? I've tried rebooting, unplugging everything, and resetting the display preferences, nothing works. Also, I could re-install the operating system but then it'll store all my current data in the documents folder and take up more space and I'm currently running a little low on memory. I don't want to risk running out while doing a re-install.

Thanks,
James

Edit: I've used this Samsung-Gateway combination for about 3 years and it's always worked great until now. (Except the stupid fact that every single time I reboot the computer it forgets my display preferences.)

Also, is it possible for me to uninstall all my drivers and then re-install them? Will I lose power from my battery if I uninstall that driver, or will my screen go blank if I uninstall all the monitor drivers?

Edit: There is also an update from 2008, regarding the display, but it won't let me install it. Vista is giving me Error Code 80070103 and as usual the Help info that it giving me is completely useless and it doesn't in any way help me find a solution. I sware, as soon as I buy a new laptop I'm putting Linux on this junk...

The first thing to do is to connect the monitor to another computer to see if it works there.
If it doesn't, then the monitor is probably broken
If it does, then the VGA port on your laptop may be broken. You can test this by plugging another monitor into it.

Is there anything special that you use the drivers for? In most cases the in-built Windows drivers are good enough for most folks, and it's much easier to use them than it is to track down and install custom 3rd party drivers.

Since I posted I have found that it seems like the monitor is the problem, either the backlight or the panel.

Regardless, I'm still having problems with Vista. I use a very expensive CAD package and rendering package and using the poorer drivers is certainly not sufficient.

Also, since I did pay for this at one point there is no reason that I shouldn't be allowed to use the proper drivers.

It's your system and you can use anything that you want on it.
I just relate my experience that, if you install a lot of stuff on your system, it's gonna be less stable than if you keep installations to a minimum.

Microsoft develops Windows and writes the "generic" drivers for it - I'd expect that that would result in a more stable platform than if someone wrote a driver for your monitor and tacked it onto Windows (admittedly, this is an oversimplification of the scenario).