ATI Radeon 600 HP Laptop Display all white screen

[jhornyak]

Need your expert advice on what a problem might be, I have an HP Pavilion Model ZD8000 here and the display screen just went suddenly all white,  I can boot it up in VGA mode, and I have uninstalled the device drivers and re-installed them.  After I reinstalled them I tried to change the display back to the high resolution mode, the screen went all white again.  Do you have any ideas what may be wrong, I think it may be the display chip on the laptop, do you think this is something I can replace on my own or do I need to have HP do it?

[Amrykid]

have you recently updated drivers, if so, maybe the drivers are not fully compatible with you graphics card (build in or not).

[jhornyak]

Yes, I did load new drivers from ATI, same problem.  The display was working fine, just went to white while responding to some e-mails.  The only way I can get a display is by booting up and choosing "start in VGA mode" everything is fine until I try to change the resolution to the higher level that I had before and then the screen turns white.

Thanks

[patio]

Try booting into safemode which skips your installed drivers...
Tap F8 repeatedly as the machine is starting.
Once in lower your screen resolution and re-boot.
If this doesn't help you may have installed an incorrect driver.

[jhornyak]

I can get the screen to display in VGA mode from the safe startup screen.  It will display at the lowest screen resolution possible.  If I try to increase the screen resolution the display will go all white, I then have to power down and reboot.  I did try hooking up an external monitor, got it to display a couple of times but the image was distorted.  I did get a blue DOS screen once with the warning about the video driver not working correctly.  I am trying to figure or troubleshoot whether it's the graphics card chip, which I think it is, or the driver.

Thanks

[jhornyak]

I did reload the new drivers, got a bit further with boot up, actually got a black screen with mouse pointer displayed but that is as far as it got with the boot up.  Only way I can get a display is by starting windows XP in VGA, low resolution mode only.  Any suggestions from anyone?  Also I am tryiing to find out if the graphics chip or card on the laptop is separate from the mother board or do I have to replace the mother board as well.

Thanks

[Deerpark]

The graphics chip is part of the motherboard, so the whole thing will need replacing if this is indeed the problem.