[1158] in winnt
Seen Dell Latitude (or Inspiron) models with LCD backlight
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kerem B Limon)
Tue Jul 8 21:50:39 2003
Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.2.20030708214438.07daefd0@hesiod>
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 21:50:31 -0400
To: ITPartners at MIT <itpartners@mit.edu>,
WinPartners at MIT <winpartners@mit.edu>
From: Kerem B Limon <kerem.limon@MIT.EDU>
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Before I escalate this back to Dell/Hardware Services, has anyone see
strange LCD backlight problems in Dell portables?
I have a Latitude C800 test system where the backlight will turn itself off
spontaneously. The LCD matrix is fine, as you can shine a flashlight off of
it to see the display is actually working. It appears to be correlated to
one or a combination of the following:
o certain battery charging levels
o presence of AC power/adapter plugged-in
o heat
Powering on with AC plugged-in often produces this. Restarting on battery
only seems to fix it for that boot. Sometimes, POST is fine, but as soon as
Windows XP boots (screen resolution change into the login screen mode), the
backlight goes away again.
Looking through the Latitude forums at Dell
(http://delltalk.us.dell.com/supportforums?category.id=latitude, just
search for "backlight"), this is a very common complaint.
Incidentally, this is a Latitude whose previous screen was flaking out
completely, flashing on and off rapidly when it went in for repair. All but
the motherboard, HDD, RAM, and the bottom half of the machine was replaced,
including the entire screen and assembly, etc. Those parts are (as far as I
can tell) brand new and days old!
Kerem
