Laptop LCD very dark and dim

[gmc8757]

My friend has a laptop about 1.5 years old and the LCD went very dim to the point where you can barely tell it's even on. I've tried to adjust the brightness and all that good stuff, but it is dark!

I hooked it up to an external monitor and everything is fine. So my guess is the LCD is bad, does anyone know what exactly could be bad and if I can replace for example a bulb or something? Or do we have to buy a whole new lcd?

Thanks.

 

[tommytran]

Shutdown the laptop, unplug the power and reinsert the battery. It may be the battery problem.

 

[gmc8757]

Ok, i'm going to try that. Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I don't have the laptop with me right now, but in a couple of hours I will.

Any other suggestions?

 

[LiLithTecH]

There is a possiblity that it can be either the INVERTER or the BACKLIGHT.
(depending on the brand/model of the laptop)

Replacing the Backlight on some LCD panels is not for the faint of heart.

 

[gmc8757]

I guess they're just going to send it back to dell and pay for them to fix it. I'm not going to complain, let them do it.

 

[marulee]

Originally posted by: LiLithTecH
There is a possiblity that it can be either the INVERTER or the BACKLIGHT.
(depending on the brand/model of the laptop)

Replacing the Backlight on some LCD panels is not for the faint of heart.

INVERTER? is where?

 

[LiLithTecH]

Depends on the make/model laptop.

 

[BladeVenom]

Did you go into your power management options and make sure there wasn't a problem there.

 

[gmc8757]

Yea, I gave that a shot. It looks perfect on an external monitor, just extremely dark on the LCD to the point where you can barely see a thing. It looks liek they want to send it backt o dell for out of warranty repair....i wonder how much it will cost.

 

[jameswhite1979]

Is it possible that its some incorrect power setup in the BIOS?

 

[gmc8757]

i don't know...they called dell...and they said they need to replace the inverter or backlight. So who knows.

 

[Mermaidman]

I still suspect that it's a power mgmt issue. I remember having a work-issued laptop with that problem and found an obscure option somewhere that made the display very dim. SOrry I can't remember the details, but maybe you can dig deeper and not have to ship the laptop away.

Edit: Try posting your question in the laptop forum.