Troubleshooting for Laptops: Video

This list is highly incomplete.

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.