sudden black screen, repeatedly; now left with little square

Bleigh2022

Using Word today and suddenly it went to black screen with a little, white 1.5" x 1" rectangle in the middle that looked kind of like a QR code. Then I saw a white border line at the lower left margin and bottom left margin. Then the computer restarted. Upon restart, now I'm left with what looks like screen damage -- a little 1/2" x 1/2" square in the center that blots out the visual, as if the screen/visual process doesn't function. It has black lines in it.

It's gone to black screen two more times within 30 minutes post crash now, but it's only restarted that one time. The other two times it has recovered itself without restarting.

Advice for next steps? And am I risking further damage if I use it in this condition?

Thanks in advance.

Bleigh2022

P.S. I should've said it's an HP Pavilion 7th gen intel I bought in 2017. A few days ago it shut down suddenly and restarted. Other than that I've had no problems with it, but I had used it RARELY until the last six months. For the last four months I've used it daily for about an hour.

Lambdaben

Based on what you have posted, my only assumption I can come to would be that it may be possible that the ZIF connector for your laptop screen may have had a short. This may require purchasing a replacement screen in order to test out that theory, or you could try attaching a tv or monitor to your laptop to see if the issue appears on those devices as well. More testing and information would be needed, if you don't feel like testing it, you could bring it in to your local Micro Center for diagnostics.

Bleigh2022

Thanks. How about this new twist: upon rebooting the little suqare isn't there anymore. All repercussions seem remedied. But because of it shutting down spontaneously last week and doing the black screen thing repeatedly today, I should probably have it looked at. And one more thing: when it goes to black screen, if I click anywhere, the black screen goes away and I can resume what I was doing. Weird, huh? Any new thoughts?

Thanks, again.

Lambdaben

Still making assumptions, but, leaning towards a faulty connector on the lcd screen, but it could be a bad graphics card driver or a the graphics processor has shorted out. Try checking your Event Viewer to see if it can give you more information.

PowerSpec_MikeW

@Bleigh2022

Sounds like your GPU driver is crashing and restarting, what you're seeing is data left over in the frame buffer. You should be able to see more if you look in Event Viewer at the this occurred. If it happens again you might try resetting the GPU driver with Windows + Control + Shift + B.