My buddy has a Gateway 400SD4 laptop. When you turn it on the fans spin, lights blink, but no picture comes on the screen. It has an external video port, so I hooked up my monitor to it, hit the function key to switch between LCD & CRT and nothing appears on my monitor. At this point I'm thinking video card. Any ideas?
Actually most Laptops do not have a Video card, they have a Graphics Chipset though in many cases it is the Video Invertor which is faulty.
Well I meant the onboard video when I said video card. Never heard of a video invertor.
Any thoughts on narrowing down the culprit here?
My first option (after checking to ensure that video out is not set to output) would be to take the laptop apart and check the connection ribbon for the monitor. It could be that it skewed in some way and is disconnected. The ribbon will have a small tension pin attatched to it so just losen it, pull out the ribbon, make sure it's relatively clean then reinstall it. Give this a try and i'll try to keep an eye on this thread to see if it helped.