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The LCD screen on my Toshiba Satellite A100-011 laptop suddenly went black. Since the backlight is still working, and I have image on an external monitor (see below), I'm assuming it is broken.

Meanwhile, I am unable to boot normally into Windows 7. The external monitor goes black right before the logon screen, when display drivers are loaded. To work around this issue, I renamed the Nvidia driver in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\nvlddmkm.sys from Safe Mode, and now the system boots normally, but with the generic display drivers.

What prevents me from booting normally with the external monitor using the Nvidia drivers?

Additional details:

  • The internal display is always blank, it's almost sure it is faulty.
  • The internal display is not detected, i.e. in "display settings" there is only one display, the external one
  • I can't select VGA only output from BIOS, my only options for Power on display are "Auto" and "LCD+analogRGB" (which I think it means to power both displays)
  • If I select "LCD+analogRGB" a weird thing happens: the BIOS gets shadowed by Windows! The first time I did it I freaked out since I couldn't access the BIOS any more; finally succeeded by mashing the F keys but don't know which one actually did the trick.
  • I really need to load the normal drivers. The generic ones support only 16bit colors and prevent Windows from entering sleep mode!
  • Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce 7600

Thanks.

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most laptops use a special Fn (or similar) key + another key to switch between displays (LCD, External, LCD+External). with the normal driver loaded after the screen goes blank are you able to use that combo to perhaps switch back to the external? also, there are multiple models of the A100 series laptop, can you be more specific on which yours is? – Xantec Nov 24 '10 at 20:23
The combo is Fn+F5, but it doesn't do anything (except make the external display flicker). I think this is because the internal display is not detected and thus can't switch to it. The laptop model is A100-011. – Poloboc Nov 24 '10 at 20:34
Have you tried extending your display on to the external screen using the Windows + P button? Pressing P twice will duplicate the display. – Randolph West Nov 24 '10 at 21:07
@Randolph since only the external monitor is detected, and image is formed only on the external monitor, Win+P doesn't do anything. What I wish to achieve is to use just the external monitor, but with the Nvidia drivers, which I don't know how to do.. – Poloboc Nov 25 '10 at 0:39
Right, now I understand. – Randolph West Nov 25 '10 at 1:36
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