Odd laptop screen problem - help!

I’ll try to make a long story as short as possible:

I have a Dell PC laptop, running Windows XP. A good friend wanted to borrow it this weekend, reluctantly I agreed.

I sent a few emails from home last night, no problems. Shut down as normal & unplug it & walk it over to friend’s place, no drops and I don’t think a whole lot of jostling.

Elapsed time 30 min. Plug machine into his powerstrip, boot up, normal Dell powering-up screen followed by normal Windows XP booting up screen. Then screen goes black & I hear the Windows welcome jingle. Screen just black. Turn computer off with double Ctrl-Alt-Del. Repeat with same result. Turn off with plug out, battery removed. Battery back in, same result. Plug in, reboot, same result.

Attach friend’s monitor to my machine, Windows boots up normally on his screen w/o prompting. Files appear intact (whew!). Run a couple programs, seems normal. Audio comes out of my machine normally.

Take laptop home. Plug in, boot up and shut down in various combos, same result: black screen.

Caught Windows boot ups with function key break-ins to run diagnostic tools (I don’t have lot of experience with this but it seemed fairly straightforward). All sorts of pretty colors and patterns on screen, proper colers etc… No problems, told repeatedly hardware working fine. Reboot, get to when my desktop should pop up again and… black screen.

I’m borrowing a monitor this weekend to try and A) back-up any non-archived files to avoid disaster and B) try and fix the problem by looking at the seperate screen. Apparently my machine works (thanks be!), it just won’t let me watch it work…

When I have the monitor, what are some things I can try to do to get video back? That’s my question. I should be able to hit the web this weekend with the borrowed monitor (and tomorrow from work!) to read replies…

A friend of a friend in an IT dayjob gave a phone diagnosis that maybe there was a power surge (thudnerstorm when I plugged computer in friend’s place) the power strip didn’t handle that made things FUBAR , and I was lucky not to lose all my data.

Thank you very much in advance for any possible answers. I’m also curious at to what the cause of this might be; I certainly didn’t play around with any display settings on purpose.

You’ve just got it set to use the external monitor. There’s a special function key on your keyboard - use that in combination with the key that looks like a laptop and monitor* to cycle through the different modes. There’s probably three - laptop only, external only, and both.

  • If you can’t find it, well, RTFM or post your specific laptop model.

Well, you didn’t include the model number, so I can only guess the keystrokes on your laptop…

My First Guess

On most laptops, they have a function that allows you to “output” the screen to an external monitor for presentations and the like. There’s three modes - laptop LCD screen, where it displays on the laptop, External Monitor, where it displays on the external monitor but not the laptop, and Both, where it displays on your laptop and the external monitor.

If you look on your keyboard, you’ll see the blue FN key. Usually, on Dells, you’ll see a picture of a monitor screen on the F5 key. If you hit the Blue FN key and the F5 key, it will swap the screen output.

If this allows you to get your LCD screen back, then it was just a keystroke error.
My Second Guess

There is a function in the Bios that sets the screen display (bright, low light, off) that may have become discombobulated. Boot into the bios, and see if the “brightness” setting got whacked.

**
My Wild Guesses**

  • Check the brightness level you set. Its the Blue FN key, plus the little sun-looking picture with an up arrow near it. Perhaps you turned it down.
  • Check the Dell website to see if there were any updates for your bios or video display, install them, and see if the problem gets fixed.
    If none of these work, then what you are describing is fairly typical of a power inverter issue for the LCD screen. If it is, I hope you have a warranty, or good friends who can help you fix things.

Good luck, and I hope this helps.

It’s also possible that the resolution for the LCD screen is set to something more than Windows can handle. Try booting into safe mode, or normal mode in VGA only. Does the screen work?

Our Dell laptop does the same thing - this is what works:

Let it run for about 5 minutes with the black screen. Turn it off, then back on. The screen should work again.

My HP laptop running windows ME does the same, and I can get the screen back by putting the computer to sleep, then waking it up. (there’s a button for this; it has another name but I can’t think of it. Suspending?)

Well I hope it’s something simple, but I had the “backlighting” go out on my laptop. They had to replace the screen.

Thanks much all for the suggestions. I’m reading this at work for obvious reasons. If the letting it run 5 min doesn’t work I’ll be able to try some of the other stuff out this weekend when (if I need to) borrow a monitor. I’ll let folks know how everything works out.

This is a great example of how the SDMB subscription can more than pay for itself in one question! :slight_smile:

Oops, sorry, meant to mention I have a Dell Inspiron 8500. And I will RTFM.

I just found this online, I’m going to try this physical fix as well:

http://www.howtofixcomputers.com/bb/ftopic94189.html

This would make a lot of sense in that the problem started after I moved the machine, walked around with it a little. Seems to be the type of thing you wouldn’t design for a laptop

Aha, that howtofixcomputers.com link described the problem precisely! The little nub that senses the screen being closed got jostled a few millimeters off to the side and stuck halfway into a ‘closed’ position. As the thread suggests, that is pretty bad design. No other hardware or software problems.

I was able to fix it with the aid of a small flathead screwdriver. No other hardware or software problems - hooray!

Thanks to all the posters - I’m a happy camper now.

Bravo!!! A happy ending.

:slight_smile: