posted
So I bought this brand new P4 2.4 ghz Dell Inspiron 5100 for this deployment, and basically my whole life is on it. I watch my movies on it, listen to my thousands of mp3's on it, obviously my porn is on it, and this afternoon I got a wonderful surprise when I turned it on and the screen was DIM. It's basically like the light that actually "lights up" the screen has burnt out. FUCK!
Turns out that this is a problem that Dell users have been having for a while with other display types. I called Dell support and they want me to send the fucker to the U.S. and then they'll fix it, and send it back. Great, I'll be HOME by then!
Read this and tell me if you can come up with any ideas or advice. Anyone have any friends at Dell? Anyone have any ideas or am I totally fucked for the next couple months?
posted
I emailed this topic to Steve, he used to be in charge of laptop support at Micron and his last job. He knows a bit about screen issues.
I would put pressure on Dell to do an even swap - you might lose some of your stuff but at least you would have a computer in a week. They will do stuff like that if you really raise a stink.
posted
That's the LCD backlight, if it's hosed, there's not much you can do other than have it repaired. The only trick I know of that may not even apply to your machine is sometimes there's a switch that gets pushed down to turn off the backlight when you close the lid. It's a power-saving thing. On some of the Micron notebooks that would get stuck in the down position if dirt and debris got jammed in that button. Look around the base of the notebook where the edge of the LCD mates when it's closed and see if there's anything like that. If there is, you can try poking that with a paperclip or something, that might free it up.
If you do end up going for a repair, I'd recommend you ship it to a friend or family member stateside first. Then have that person set up the repair with Dell and ship it back once they receive it back from Dell. I don't think I'd trust Dell to ship to an APO.
If you can get an even exchange, you should be able to just transfer your hard drive to the new machine. We used to do that all the time at Micron but it was a special warranty option you had to purchase up front. If you do send it in, unless they insist, DON'T SEND YOUR HARD DRIVE! Those assholes will probably wipe it clean or some crap or it could get damaged in shipping. There's no reason they should need your HDD for an LCD repair. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help. Cassandra used to work for Dell and knows their system pretty well. She might know some tricks if you run into a wall with them. Best of luck.
posted
Steve's post got me thinking about a similar problem we had here with a couple of Dells. So I asked Jon our resident IT kid about how he fixed it - turns out he had fixed that exact problem on a couple Dimentions. I had him walk me though the repair and I snapped a couple digitals.
1) Snap the bar above the keyboard off with a screw driver from right to left.
2) Flip the laptop over and take out all the screws marked with a "K" for keyboard. The keyboard should now come up and you can flip it over to expose the top of the computer.
3)There should be a gold ribbon that connects the screen to the top of the computer. There is a plug on the far right that will come up (circled in red). Unplug that and blow clean the connector - dirt gets in there. Jon said in the three or so he has done that has fixed the backlight problem. Posts: 5484 | From: St. Paul, Mn | Registered: Apr 2002
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Before reading this post I took my laptop to my room and jostled it around a little bit, cursed at it, and then kicked my wall locker. Now imagine if you will "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" when he is cursing and yelling at the lights, and finally plugs them into each other and the sparks fly and it lights up...
That's what happened. After yelling at it and cursing I opened the screen and pressed the power button, and I swear to God I heard singing in the background as the screen lit up.
Thanks for the pics though Scott, if this happens again I might give that a shot. The only problem is the whole voiding the warranty thing...
quote:Originally posted by BoondockSaint: The only problem is the whole voiding the warranty thing...
I knew you were going to say that! Just didn't know how much you wanted to use the computer. Glad to hear everything worked out.
Posts: 5484 | From: St. Paul, Mn | Registered: Apr 2002
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