Laptop screen VERY dark - can't see

Philster · #1 01-30-2003, 07:19 AM

My son's Toshiba Satellite had a bad CD-rom and I installed a new one. I must have messed up something with the screen when I did because now the screen is so dark you can barely see anything. Attached to desktop monitor and it works fine, but laptop screen stays dark. Any ideas on what I did??????

big_hoovie · #2 01-30-2003, 04:08 PM

you prolly accidentally hit the contrast or brightness slider...if you don't know where it is, consult your owners manual...

TheLabel · #3 01-30-2003, 05:50 PM

Try shutting and opening the lid a few times. I have this same problem with my laptop sometimes, usually it works after shutting/opening it once but sometimes it takes 10 or more times.

Zitchta · #4 01-31-2003, 04:56 PM

I work with laptops (repair them) and it sounds like your backlight has possibly gone bad. Unfortunately, it's a very expensive fix since you most likely will need to get a whole new screen to fix it.

I'd say have your local CompUSA or similar store check it out.

Philster · #5 02-04-2003, 02:08 PM

TheLabel was close!! I found when I took it apart that the switch that tells the laptop that the screen is "down" was held down by some plastic insulation that I accidentally moved. This made the laptop think the screen was always down. I moved it over and everything works fine now!!
Thanks for all the input, it put me on the right track!!

TheLabel · #6 02-05-2003, 04:26 PM

I should fix mine but I'm sure I would break something else while attempting to fix it

Bruce · #7 06-01-2003, 06:26 PM

Hi there Fella's,

I must say, this thread has saved my ass!

My work laptop was down with the same issue, and I leave for Bangkok in less than a week for work. My company as as tight as........... so this has got me back on the road!

Isnt it funny how we tend to assume the most complex solution these days?

Anyway, thanks once again and have fun,

Bruce.

Philster · #8 06-03-2003, 10:15 PM

Bruce, glad it helped and hope you didn't have to take apart your laptop 5 or 6 times before you found the problem.

Have fun in Bangkok.

Chochi1997 · #9 09-01-2003, 12:26 PM

Hello TOSHIBA-Users! My advice for your dark screens: Every Toshiba laptop has a small wheel on the right hand side of the monitor which you can pull up or down in order to adjust the screen. You will have accidently touched it and moved the screen to dark. There´s no need for repair!!!!!

Jay P · #10 04-21-2005, 03:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chochi1997

Hello TOSHIBA-Users! My advice for your dark screens: Every Toshiba laptop has a small wheel on the right hand side of the monitor which you can pull up or down in order to adjust the screen. You will have accidently touched it and moved the screen to dark. There´s no need for repair!!!!!

Hi, I was wondering where the wheel is. I cant seem to find it on my Toshiba laptop. I too am having the same problem with the very dark screen. I can see but it is very, very faint. Is it that might black light went out or is it something else? Is there any way I can check to make sure its the blacklight? THANKS!

torque2k · #11 04-22-2005, 12:23 AM

Wrong, not every Toshiba has a dial/slider. My Satellite 4000CDT (which I just sold) didn't (had to use a Toshiba utility to adjust it, which didn't work after upgrading to 2000), and my wonderful Libretto 110 doesn't. Some have Fn-key adjustments (works like Dells or Compaqs), some don't. I even bought a new Centrino-based Toshiba at Christmas for a client, and it also didn't have a dial (used the Fn-key combo instead).

Duke · #12 05-03-2005, 07:45 AM

hello all.

I have a Satellite 3000 and about a year a go the screen backlight kept going off. So we sent it in to the repair place and they told us there was nothing wrong with it. When we got it back it was fine for a day or two then it happened again. Sent it back once more and still they said there was nothing wrong with it.

After all that they replaced the backlight unit and sent it back. It was fine for a week or two but the same thing happened again.

Any ideas I don’t want to sent it back to the Tecks again.

malama · #13 09-16-2006, 02:09 AM

I have a Toshiba Satellite 3000 also and at first the darkened screen (w/ barely visible desktop) was an intermittent problem. Now its chronic. I used my emergency restore disks - for this process I had the laptop hooked up to another display and I was able to see the restoration process clearly. The problem resurfaced (on remote monitor even!) just shortly into XP booting. It leads me to believe it might be a hibernation issue. A little plastic bit fell out of the "screen is down" hole - uh oh. I'm wary of pulling my laptop apart to investigate this further as I can just hear plastic snapping! Well, its not working anyhow! Figures I had just upgraded HD and RAM!! Thanks for the interesting thread. Cheers!

PS. my toshiba doesn't have a brightness or contrast wheel (external).

tsacrey · #14 10-23-2006, 08:41 AM

Hi,

I'm new around here, and it seems that my problem is similar to the problems discussed in this thread. I have a Dell Inspiron 9400, bought it like 6 months ago, and has served me very well, except that recently I've been finding that, sometimes, when I close the lid, the screen goes black, but will not turn on again once it is open. I have an eerie feeling it is a hardware problem, since sometimes when I close it and re-open it's fine.

The other night I closed it very slowly and watched it carefully as it reached the point where the screen turns off. Then I re-opened it and the screen wouldn't come back on. This leads me to believe that it might be a problem with the switch inside the computer that is responsible for sensing whether the cover is down or not.

I was just wondering if you had any thoughts on this, and if you knew where the switch or sensor is for Dell laptops, so maybe I could check it out myself? I'd rather not go through the motions of sending it back, I'd like to fix it myself if possible. Thanks for any help you can provide!

Terry

wjervis · #15 09-22-2007, 08:52 AM

I am having the same problem on a Dell Inspiron 5160. The problem is that the screen goes very dark so that you can just see the outline of the GUI. I tried rebooting several times to no avail. Then I read the thread and open and closed the lid about 5 times. Each time the screen went white for a milisecond then went very dark again. On the fifth time it recovered. However, the problem is taht thescreen went dark again after about 30 seconds! What a bummer! So I did the reopen proceedure and now it is bright. Once it was bright I checked the darkness/brightness scale: it only controls a minutia of the darkness scale, and doesnt go anywhere near very dark. So that was not the problem. I also went into control pannel's power settings and saw that nothing screwy was set up there like hibernate after 30 seconds. I adjusted one setting just in case, in this case I toggled to the ASK ME setting if the sleep button is pressed. Now it seems to work ok. The screen just went into screen saver mode, and just came out when a button was pushed. So maybe I am in the clear.

Does anyone know what the problem is? Is it a sensor/HW issue or is it a settings issue?

Thank you.