17" monitor won't stay on more than 2 seconds

I saw this old post. This "2 seconds to black" problem has been reported for about 10 years. I have a basic knowledge of electronics and my old monitor went the same "2 seconds to black" route so I fixed it myself. Note - this is not Dell approved. My monitor is working perfectly now and has been for a few days since I fixed it. The "2 seconds" is an industry-standard time delay for closing down your monitor if the chip in your monitor detects that your backlights are not drawing the expected power. In this situation, there is likely a component failure on your inverter board.So what your monitor is doing is showing you the picture at the start and then cutting the power supply to the backlights after two seconds If you are quick enough to notice it, when the original screen image appears, it is slightly darker than normal. This is the problem. Something is not right. It could be a breakdown in the electrolytic capacitors of the power supply. It could be that a pair of high current switching transistors have blown. In rare cases, it could be that the ceramic disc capacitors that are part of the circuit feeding one of the backlights has blown. This "2 seconds to black" problem is bound to happen to any monitor at some stage because some components are under stress and are bound to fail at some stage. Electrolytic capacitors and high current switch resistors are the weak link. It does not mean that you need a new monitor in the same way as a bad spark plug does not mean that you need a new automobile. You just have to replace the bad parts and then you should be good for many years to come. I recently did this repair and for the benefit of other users I webbed it on my ugly programming web site.

www.datasavantconsulting.com/.../2sec2blk.html