The screen on my hp laptop has turned to the dark side

[Joseph Rynerson]

I was playing freecell Sunday evening when the screen on my hp pavillion
n5290 laptop went dark. If I look closely I can still see an image and can
see the mouse pointer move. It is as if the screen is not powered anymore. I
have tried the hot keys fn +f5 and fn +f2 to try to brighten the screen and
to make sure I have not inadvertently switched to an external monitor but
nothing helps. HP had me try these things plus hook up an external monitor.
The external monitor worked fine. The laptop is three years old so I am out
of the warranty period. I had just loaded sp4 for windows 2000pro. I
uninstalled sp4 but that changed nothing. Hp wants to set up a service
appointment with someone for a fee. Does anyone know what could have caused
the screen to stop working. If so, is this an expensive fix, is this fix
something I could do? I have built two of the computers I have here at home
but know very little about laptops. It is sad that the thing decided to fail
now, I just (2 months ago) bought a new battery, boosted my ram to 512 and
put a 60 gig hard drive in it. I wonder if the bigger hard drive could have
generated to much heat. This laptop is a pIII 800mhz
Thanks
Joe

 

[281 cu. in.]

It got old?

Try booting from DOS floppy or in DOS, see if it's still dark. If it is
still dark nothing wrong with Windows, you need new LCD.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

This is strictly a hardware issue. Your laptop's display has lost
it's back-lighting. No amount of fiddling with software, drivers, or
service packs will have the slightest affect.

And, as the display is the single most expensive component on a
laptop, this could be an expensive repair, unless there's a way to
repair the backlighting without replacing the entire display.
(Depends on how it was initially built/assembled and the availability
of replacement parts.)

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:

 

[Joseph Rynerson]

Thanks for the suggestions. Getting help from these newsgroups has educated
me and helped me out of some bad spots. Hopefully I can get an idea of what
is wrong and how much it is going to cost from a shop without paying
hundreds to find out. I will look to see if the ribbon cable is as it should
be.
Thanks again
Joe

 

[Peter]

Hi Joe, Actually it Sounds like the lcd backlight has
given up the ghost. After 3 years of great service to you
it has retired. Not and un-common occurance, especialy if
you like to keep the brightness and contrast up high.
It will need to be serviced by hp or good a laptop
service center, as it is too difficult to replace with out
running the risk of fubar-ing your lcd panel permanently.
Let someone else pay for the lcd if they break it
replacing the basically a very tiny delicate florecent
tube.
Been there and done it my self before and @ the cost of
and lcd panel + the backlight tube. Luckily mine was an
older Pentium 133 laptop. (Tonnes of parts on eBay

Cheers.
Peter