dell laptop backlight issues
 

I have a dell inspirion 8000 series laptop. Latley, at random times (although it seems to happen quicker when I load and close many windows ie. web pages) my screen will either go completley black or half of the screen will go black. if you hold a lap close to the screen, you can still see everything. Its almost as though the lcd's backlights are going out. Yet, when I restart the computer, or even bring it in and out of standby (horrid I know) the screen is back to its glorious brilliance. Of course, it then randomly goes black or half and half again. Any one else have this issue, or know of its cause?

i have a similar issue with my HP , for me its caused by the power saving features of the laptop just being freaky, sometimes i have to remove the mains power for a second to make it realize its plugged in and restore full brightness

this isnt just a dimming, this is total black, and the desktop is only visible if you hold a lamp up to the screen, and only then can you see a dim verison of the desktop. i tried the power cord trick, to no avail. Thanks though!!

oh even worse :)
check your video drivers are upto date including directx, if they are check it in dos or the bios or boot screen, see if it does it then, if not its likely drivers, if it still does, time to call dell.

My buddy has a dell laptop that was doing this as well. His vidcard died in about a month after these symptoms started showing up.. Like charliex said.. update drivers, make sure everything is seated well and contact dell.. I wouldnt futz around in there myself if it's still under warranty.

drivers are latest.. BIOS is latest. I'll leave it in BIOS and see if it dims. It is out of warranty. Ganguro, what happend with your buddy's laptop? Did dell cover it?

Bad news...I'm a dell tech.

Your invertor is going out, call dell if you have a warrenty left.

This happens with all manufacters laptops, and I'm very familiar with it.

this thing happened to my laptop a while back, they said it was something to do with loose connections meaning the screen would flicker and then go off or just stay on... does it flicker if u move the screen around?

Yeah this happened with my HP. It was the invertor. I replaced it myself since my warrenty was up and HP wanted an insane amount of money to fix it, and they said they would run a system restore cd to restore my system back to the factory default (!!?).