Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Samsung Monitor with "Black Display" Restored to Functional Status

Summary

This is yet another "missing manual" post describing how to bring a Samsung SA series monitor back from the brink.  My particular monitor is a SA27A350H that I bought a few years back at Costco.  About a week ago, when I connected a MacBook Pro to this monitor, the monitor looked like it was powered on, but was not displaying anything but "black."  The OSD menu was basically useless since the only thing it would allow to be selected is the "SETUP&RESET" menu item.  Within that, only the PC/AV Mode menu item could be selected.  Then once that was selected, the scroll buttons would not do anything.  So for all practical purposes, the firmware in the monitor had bricked itself.

Research

As usual, the process of finding a solution to this problem led to one frustrating bit of incomplete information after another.  There is a YouTube video that rambles on for a while and says nothing more than "update the firmware and that'll fix it." (reference below).  There were also a few forum posts that indicated essentially the same thing. (references below)  However, when I tried that on my Dell Laptop, running Windows 7, the FirmwareUpdater ran for few seconds and then reported "There is no monitor to upgrade." followed by another message that said "Your monitor already has the latest version or does not need to be upgraded, so it does not require upgrade."  That led me to assume that my monitor already had the latest firmware and that the FirmwareUpdater.exe would never help me out of this mess.  I even made a brief attempt to find a way to patch the FirmwareUpdater.exe utility (or one of its associated dll files) using a disassembler (reference below), but that was proving to be a little too challenging without a debug symbol file.

Samsung FAIL

As I mentioned above, the FirmwareUpdater.exe on Windows 7 just gave up and reported what turned out to be misleading messages.  I still don't know if the monitor actually had an older version of the firmware (which definitely had a bug that caused the "black display" issue.)  I do know that the FirmwareUpdater.exe led me to believe the monitor was up to date and that I couldn't just overwrite the firmware.

Solution

There was a mention somewhere in the forum post about trying the firmware update on another computer.  So, after giving up on getting the monitor to work again, and letting a few days pass, it seemed like it might be worthwhile to dig out an old Windows XP netbook I had with a VGA port and try the FirmwareUpdate.exe thing one more time.  That's what did the trick.  I don't know what's different between Windows XP and Windows 7, or maybe it's the difference in the VGA port on my newer Dell laptop and the older MSI netbook, but whatever it is, the FirmwareUpdate.exe utility actually worked when it ran on the XP netbook.  So, I have a functional monitor again!!  Hope this post has something in it that makes the difference for someone else.  Good luck!!

References


14 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you so much for this! I had the same problem - The updater was telling me it was already up to date. I installed XP on an old laptop, done the update and screen has been saved!

frepes21 said...

During Updating the monitor, Is it require internet connection?

Whirly said...

@frepes21, I don't think you need to be connected to the internet after you have downloaded the firmwareupdater.exe. I don't think it retrieves anything else, but I didn't watch to see if it connected anywhere. If you find out that it does "call home" to download additional files, please post another comment with some details (like the IP/host/URL where it connects).

Martin Roy said...

Cannot install firmware because of BSOD. Tried on laptop (Old Compaq Presario!) with Win2000, resulting a bluescreen, after replacing Win2000 by WinXP SP3, same thing, another bluescreen.

In both case I installed A350 drivers before trying to update de firmware.

What i'm doing wrong ???

octay said...

Thank you! I had the same problem on my samsung s23a550h. I tried updating the firmware with windows 10 and it didn't work. I found your blog, and luckily i have an old laptop with windows vista. So I gave it a try. I watched the youtube link for reference and now my monitor works! I am so grateful.

Whirly said...

@octay, glad to hear this post helped! I find things like this very frustrating and am always relieved if I find someone has worked out a solution, and has taken the time to share it. I've lost count of how many times someone's how-to post has helped me disable or fix some boneheaded, broken "feature" in Windows 10.

causeuse said...

I never ever post on online forums but YOU saved my monitor! Thank you soooo much! It worked like a charm! Thank heavens that I still had an old laptop with Windows XP on it.

Unknown said...

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you... Salvaged my SA350 by trying the Firmware upgrade on THREE different machines and finally the last one actually fixed it.

Unknown said...

I had the same problem. Firmware Updater not working on Win10 ("firmware is already up to date" message). Solved using an old Windows XP computer. Thank you very much!

Adam Peterson said...

I had the same problem. I tried performing the update with another Windows 7 (not XP) computer and it seemed to proceed. However, it's now been updating for over an hour, which I can only assume is not normal.

Any suggestions? I'm pretty sure it will be bricked if I try to disrupt/restart/cancel it, but I have a feeling that's the likely outcome for me no matter what I do. I'll let it run overnight before I try anything hasty, though.

Thanks, nonetheless, for writing this blog post so I could at least attempt to make some headway on the problem!

Saad Abdullah said...

But what do I do if I don't HAVE an older laptop?

Whirly said...

Saad Abdullah - I hope you've figured this out by now (sorry for the delay, but I don't look at comments on Blogger much any more). If, like me, this ended up in a stack of unfinished projects that got stalled for some reason, the only things I can think to suggest are (1) to find a really cheap (i.e. cheaper than a new monitor) laptop on Ebay that would work long enough to fix the monitor and then recycle it, or, (2) borrow one from that hoarder friend of yours... you know the one... who has 5 old, virus-infected laptops collecting dust in his/her cellar.

WinKey said...

Another success story after trying to update the firmware using more recent computers with either Windows 7 or Windows 10 to no where. As a final attempt, dusted off an old Windows XP laptop and connected through VGA to do the firmware upgrade, OMG!!! Beautiful pictures come back to this 27 inch monitor!!! This post really made us happy, saving TWO SA550 27 inch monitors!

Maged said...

Can't thank you enough.