Troubleshooting for Laptops: Video

This list is highly incomplete, and will be heavily edited in the coming weeks.

Problem: Wonky screen; screen is black, divided, filled with lines or textures, or otherwise displays unreadable garbage.

Solution: Open BIOS to find out what video card is in the machine.

Is it nVidia? If so, download the needed driver if you know how. If you don't know how, put a piece of masking tape on the top of the machine indicating that the video driver probably needs to be downloaded.

--Did you change anything immediately before the problem started? If so, undo the change and then try the device again.