Black Screen of Death?

P

pixpicker

Geek Trainee
The screen on my Dell Latitude D505 running XP has gone almost black with the desktop barely visible. This happened suddenly upon startup the other day. I know this can't be good. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to revive it?

I tried the brightness control and it has no effect. I have the laptop running on AC power. A friend of mine had the same laptop so I swapped batteries but still had the same problem. It's difficult to navigate the desktop when you can barley see it but I can get into most things. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
The backlight isn't working, this could be because it's:

a) Broken.
b) Being disabled by a small button near the screen, often if the power option for what happens when you close the screen is set to 'do nothing' then all it does it turn the backlight off, make sure that button isn't being obscured / pressed by anything.

That's all I can think of right now.
 
Thanks. I assume the little button is the one that's activated when you close the screen. That seems to be physically OK but it doesn't change the situation. There is a black bar on the hinge on the lower right of the screen that keeps flashing what looks like a timer icon. Could that be associated with the problem?

I'm beginning to think the backlight is shot.
 
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