Laptop Screen Issue

[Joe Pelonio]

My daughter is living in Italy, and just started doing online consulting work
with a customer in the U.S. Unfortunately her Dell laptop is acting
up. The screen periodically shuts off. The computer is not off-- the power lights are still on and you can hear it running. But in order to get it to work again, she has to press down on the power key to shut it down and then again to restart it. After 5 hours talking to Dell, the best they can do is have her ship it to them. They suspect the video card is bad.

She can find no computer repair places in Naples that can do anything. Any suggestions from experts?

[Boyd Gathwright]

.... If there is a Video card installed in it, and not incorporated into the mother board, take it out and reinsert it. You may need to do this a couple of times to make good connections by shining up the contact fingers. Do NOT touch the gold contacts on the edge of the board in the process .

My daughter is living in Italy, and just started doing online consulting work
with a customer in the U.S. Unfortunately her Dell laptop is acting
up. The screen periodically shuts off. The computer is not off-- the power lights are still on and you can hear it running. But in order to get it to work again, she has to press down on the power key to shut it down and then again to restart it. After 5 hours talking to Dell, the best they can do is have her ship it to them. They suspect the video card is bad.

She can find no computer repair places in Naples that can do anything. Any suggestions from experts?

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

a couple observations...
- we've had a lot of similair problems with our Dell laptops at work. most people have zero luck with any of the hibernate/standby features. adjust the power properties to disable all standby and hibernation features - at the most, allow it to turn off the hard disks and monitor, but do not hibernate or standby.
- I sometimes see something similair where my laptop is on but nothing shows on the display, usually after closing the lid and then opening it ; pressing (Fn-F8) or whatever keystroke it is to "enable" an attached LCD projector - seems to work some of the time. The normal cycle of display modes is (laptop display only) -> (laptop display and projector display) -> (projector display only) -> (laptop display only). it seems like the pc "forgets" about the laptop display and needs to be kicked back into showing it.

[Joe Pelonio]

Thanks, I'll pass on the information and have her disable standby. As for removal of the card, no way she would try it but maybe her husband will look at it when he gets home from work.

Oops - I forgot he should be home now since it's 9pm there.

[Jon Knauft]

Joe,

John is spot on. In the Control panel>Power Options have her check that the display isn't set to turn off after X minutes. I had a coworker that had the same issue as your daughter and it turns out her display was set to power down after 30 minutes of inactivity. Once she changed the option to never shutdown she didn't have any issues.

-Jon

[Peter Stahl]

Good post. My son's friend has a HP Laptop that does that. I'll pass this info along. Thanks, Pete

[Doug Shepard]

Geez I saw the thread title and hoped this might answer a nagging question. Dont want to hijack this too far but since the current subscribers seem to be up on this stuff I'll ask anyway. Are newer laptop screens significantly different from ones made maybe 4 years ago as far as the technology iinvolved? The harddrive on my old laptop died in December and I decided to just get a new one for a number of reasons. Both are HP laptops. But the screen on the new one seems to have a significantly stronger static charge than the old one. The new one seems to be able to suck cat hair and dust from the next galaxy while I never noticed the problem to this extent on the old one. Is this just because this is new and it will eventually lose some of this, or is there something different in the way they're made now that might account for this?

[Thomas Bank]

Another thought - I've seen issues where the "cable" - usually a mylar strip with "printed" wires - between the screen half and keyboard half of the laptop wears, gets kinked, or otherwise damaged and either stops working altogether or gets intermittent.

Usually a factory repair at that point, but if you can determine that is the cause it suggests a definite course of action.

[Joe Pelonio]

My daughter and her husband are both unwilling to try taking it apart, so she will bring it when she comes back here to visit next month and maybe I'll have a go at it or just send it to Dell. Apparently it's still on warranty. She had turned off all screen and power saving features after talking to Dell on the phone, so that wasn't it.

Doug, I used to have static problems with the carpet in my shop and with all the computers and sensitive equipment decided to buy a gallon of anti-static spray at a janitorial supply. It was a concentrate that I mixed with water and cost $30/gallon but worked really well, so I tried using a small amount on a cloth to wipe the monitor screens and it really kept the dust attraction to a minimum. That gallon has so far lasted 6 years.

[David G Baker]

Most laptops have a monitor out plug and a standard computer monitor can be attached to the laptop in a pinch. I have a friend that has been doing that for several years and has had no complaint except for the fact her laptop is no longer portable.

[Scott Donley]

Joe, My sister had this same problem. After 20 minutes on the phone with her turned out the AC had come unplugged at some time and the battery had gone dead. Sometimes it is the obvious.

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

good tip! a guy in our IT department saw a rash of "bad keyboards" on laptops a few years back. turned out to be loose connectors from the "ribbon cable". He figured out where to press on the keyboard to seat it a little better w/out even taking the cover - pretty quick fix.

[Joe Pelonio]

I'll try the cable and external monitor when she's here, they have no spares over there. She said that she's been using it plugged into an outlet, with the international adapter.