A rather Dull Dell

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A customer has brought a dell inspiron 1720 laptop in.

When I power it on the display is alomst impossible to see but when tilted to a certain angle you can see the display logon screen.
My inital thoughts were that the backlight is away. Would this be a correct diagnosis?

Kind Regards everyone

 

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Replace lcd inverter

Very common point of failure in dell screens and causes the dull unlit screen thing. The component shouldnt cost much

 

thanks for the reply
is it more likely to be the inverter than the baclight?

 

Doesn't the inverter supply power to the back light.

 

Try reseating the LCD cable to the motherboard, I use to work for dell, you would be amazed at how many times this fixed that type of problem.

Also check if its under warranty, Let dell fix it for free if parts are needed.

 

Yes

I have had to replace many in my hardware days.

You should be able to see the screen if you shine a torch on it. This way you can see the screen and run the dell diagnostic (press f12 and select). Or plug it into an external monitor and do the diagnostic. you may need to fn toggle for cloned display.

It should pick up the failed component.

 

Reseat the cables (to the LCD and to the motherboard) first, then reseat the inverter (careful! electrical shock danger!). If neither of those steps work, a new inverter's going to be MUCH cheaper than a new backlight. It's worth a shot... and it worked on an old Dell I had.

 

I reseated the cables to the invertor and the display looked great i let it run for a bit then shut down and closed the case.
on powering up again it went back to being dull is this a sign of the invertor being buggered or a loose cable some place?
cheers all

 

Inverter problems are usually intermittent

You could clean the cable contacts to be sure

 

after purchasing a new inverter the scrren cam up like new
i checked it on and off for a week and it seemed fine.
the day i was due to give it back to the customer it went dull again
now it works intermittently when it feels like it
i tried the re-seating the connectors again but it is doing t. i tried leaving it stationary when it worked incase it was snagging a cable somewere when i was lifting it, but it still does it .

am i to think its a backlight problem?


thanks all in avance

 

It's hard to say with intermittent problems but given the fact that it worked for a week with the new inverter, that leads me to suspect that it's more likely to be a connection issue than the backlight itself. It could be a dry solder joint where the connectors are mounted in their boards.