Brightness and Volume - screen goes black

[danilopts]

Hi guys,
Something weird is happening with my gateway MX6447 notebook.
Whenever I press:
Fn + Home (Muting)
Fn + PgUp (Increase volume)
Fn + PgDn (Decrease volume)
Fn + Up (Increase brightness)
Fn + Dn (Decrease brightness)

The screen goes inteirely black, and some blue dots appear in the upper left corner.
I've taken some pictures and filmed it, so you can see it for yourself.





And the video:


I have reseted the keyboard by taking it out and plugging it in again (like a Gateway tech told me to) and reformated the PC, but none of it worked.
Yesterday I installed vista and I noticed that when I try to change the brightness trought Windows Mobility Center, the same thing happens!

Do you have any idea of what might be going on??
Thanks!

[InnovaSource]

Sounds, like yet another Vista "undocumented feature." Did you check Gateway's site for help before you moved to Vista? Here's the link

Gateway Support - Windows Vista FAQs and Support Information

Take a look and you'll likely find the problem and solution

Cheers

Paul Croubalian

laptop parts, replacement motherboards, LCD panels, or complete laptops,

danilopts wrote:

This *might* be a problem with the chipset drivers. Reload the
recommended chipset drivers from Gateway, not Intel.

Q

[tech.kyle]

I had this same issue with my gateway notebook (although mine is an mx6446). I had noticed in the past that when i when into the catalyst control center for ati, under the integrated graphics tab, i had the option to increase the UMA buffer size from the default 128mb to 256mb. When i selected 256mb it made me restart my computer, although after rebooting when i opened the ati controls again it was still set to 128mb. I recently downloaded a driver update from ati's website, and after installing, i was able to make the change to 256mb, and have it stay set after reboot. After doing this, however, i started having the same issue: fn+vol keys caused the screen to go black for a few secs. Apparently this has something to do with gateway's display for the volume in the upper left corner being corrupted somehow. I dunno, memory conflict or something? It's been a real pain researching this issue because all of the key words in the problem bring up a lot of info that has nothing to do with it... Anyway, I uninstalled the update and went back to a version i got from the gateway site, and still had the problem. I was within minutes of wiping my sys clean and reinstalling (or becoming violent) when i thought about the UMA thing. I changed it back to 128mb, rebooted, and poof! The problem is gone. I'm gonna try the new drivers again and see if switching from 128 to 256 makes the same thing happen, but for now the problem is gone!!!!

Hope this helps!!

gateway mx6446 : upgraded to 2gb RAM : WinXP MCE

[tech.kyle]

here what it looks like in ati catalyst control center:

[tech.kyle]

After looking into it further I noticed that the graphics memory in the BIOS is set to 128mb, and there is no way to change it (without some bios editing utility that i would be kinda sketchy about using). I suppose that's why the ccc version from gateway won't allow you to change the setting to 256mb. I don't really feel like trying to deal with gateway to find out why the hardware is limited to half of it's potential... I'm just happy to have the screen back to normal...

In news:tech.kyle.364x1p@no.email.invalid,
tech.kyle typed on Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:08:43 -0500:
> After looking into it further I noticed that the graphics memory in
> the BIOS is set to 128mb, and there is no way to change it (without
> some bios editing utility that i would be kinda sketchy about using).
> I suppose that's why the ccc version from gateway won't allow you to
> change the setting to 256mb. I don't really feel like trying to deal
> with gateway to find out why the hardware is limited to half of it's
> potential... I'm just happy to have the screen back to normal...

This is with a shared video memory computer, right? If so, ignore what
the BIOS says. The reason is because the BIOS has to claim some of the
memory to display messages to the screen. Now Windows loads up and it
can change this value, thus the reason what the BIOS says isn't
important. For example, here is my Gateway MX6124:

Mobile Intel 915GM
----------------------
BIOS 8MB
Windows 64MB
Max 128MB

The only way for me to use more than 64MB (up to 128MB max) is to add
more memory. There is no switches or anything to configure. But I can
tell you that I went from 512MB to 1GB and the video memory didn't
change at all. Maybe someday I will go to 2GB and then see if it maxes
out at 128MB.

--
Bill

I honestly believe that you saved my life. I have been so
frustrated by this problem and could get no answers from Gateway. I
would have eventually had a heart attack over this. I lowered my ATI
CCC UMA Frame Buffer to 128 and the issue was resolved.

Sincere thanks


--
danimal_44