Hello everyone,
I just discovered these forums and they have a real wealth of information, which I'm really thankful for since I'm going to travel to the US soon (from Portugal) but I have a question that no one has been able to answer me yet so I hope you guys can help me out
Last year I traveled to the US from Portugal with my laptop and at the airplane gate, just before boarding, the security staff was asking everyone for their laptops and asking to turn them on. This was after 2 check points and the Xray scan to the bags and the laptop.
This is no big issue but, unfortunately, my laptop has malfunctioned since then. I've come to find out that I'm one of the "lucky" owners of a faulty graphic card chip that will break down and cause the computer to display no image at all. Apparently the soldering was bad and causes these issues, which cannot be repaired without something called "reballing", which basically means the old solder has to be removed as they insert new one at the same time (one of the reasons I want to take my computer with me to the US is because I can get my computer repaired this way).
The computer still works fine (you can hear the little windows sounds and stuff) and there's a small LED screen that even says "ASUS" and has the clock in it but it just displays no image on the main screen. I can fix it temporarily by overheating the graphic card and then rebooting really quick, usually, but I can't do that at the airport.
So here are my questions:
Can I travel with a laptop that cannot display an image (but otherwise turns on) or will the security people confiscate it?
Can I just bring my laptop turned on from home and go through security that way or will security ask me to turn it off before going through the x-ray machine?
My laptop is an ASUS G1s, in case you're wondering and this is a picture of the small little LCD that the laptop has:
Thank you very much for any help you guys can provide