Why is my Dell laptop screen not working?
Asked by
Fred931 (
9434
)
April 23rd, 2011
About a month ago, my Dell Studio 1535 laptop (2008) took a hard beating which tore off a bit of the plastic casing around the screen and broke the backlight. Nothing else was harmed. Odd. About two weeks ago, I got it back and it was working properly again, up until now.
When I try to start up the laptop, it displays a blank, backlit screen, and the computer itself seems to be otherwise working and starting up properly. This is the second time ever, and second time today, that I’ve been having this problem, and I was able to fix it on the first try by, ahem, mashing random keys with my entire hands back and forth, and after about 3 minutes of that, I saw my computer loading data or whatever in order to start in safe mode. I restarted the computer again, and it worked normally, until I shut it down again and tried to start it back up right now.
Running Vista, Intel processor, and Intel chipset for graphics.
Oh, and hello again, Fluther! It’s been, like, half a year. Did anyone miss me? :3
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9 Answers
I found a spare monitor and hooked it up, and yes, it boots normally. However, every time I use the key command to switch to the external monitor, that screen goes blank after a moment.
I had problems like that with my hp laptops. Guess what? All three of them were running the Vista OS. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing it’s a Vista problem and not just hp laptops. :/ I never could figure out how to fix them either.
Well, Vista has yet to give me any serious issues as far as this laptop is concerned, so I’m not going to run out to Staples and get 7 just because it might fix this problem.
HAHA! No, don’t do that. It’s just really odd to me that you’re having the same kind of problems. There might be a way to fix it. I just haven’t discovered it yet. :D BTW: I do have a laptop with 7 and it hasn’t had any of said issues yet. (yet…......)
Why not get a bootable Linux CD and see what happens? Might give you a steer on the a possible OS related problem.
You guys are no help at all. :/
I poked around on the Internet for awhile and found that a suggested solution for this problem was a badly-seated cable. I decided that might be it, because it might explain how button-mashing actually helped.
I found a rebuild guide and found that cable, and yes, it was badly seated, so I pressed it in a little more, put everything back together, and it now works again. :D
I reckon it’s a poorly seated cable :-)
@gmander Yeah yeah…
And of course, now I actually DO have a Vista problem (Black screen of death after OS loads) and no, the Ctrl-Alt-Del solution doesn’t work. >:o I’ll ask in another question if I can’t figure this out on my own.
Seriously, that is why I always have a live Linux CD or USB stick around; to figure out when it’s hardware and when it’s Windows acting up.
BTW, it’s F8 for Safe Mode; no need for random button-mashing ;)
And welcome back!
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