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1 Rookie
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2 Posts
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1026
August 22nd, 2020 15:00
15 R3, no LCD backlight
Hi, I have an r3 15 and tried turning it on for the first time in a couple months. When I did the screen was dark, I thought it was frozen but heard some normal windows noises. Sure enough I could see parts of the screen when I used a flashlight. The brightness buttons didn't make a difference, and when I went to display settings in windows the brightness slider was at 100% and moving it around didn't seem to make anything change. I've restarted a few times without any change, I haven't ran windows update on it, I'll try later tonight when I can hook it to an external display.
My question is: is there any weird software situation where the backlight would be off or not working despite trying the keyboard buttons and brightness settings in windows? Any simple hardware diagnostics I can do to determine where the failure is?
Thank you
ejn63
10 Elder
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30.8K Posts
1
August 22nd, 2020 15:00
It's either the backlight in the screen, or its power supply (which is part of the system board). The only definitive way to check is to identify the pins in the LCD connector that power the backlight (and it's not always possible to find a schematic to assist). If the high voltage isn't present, it's the mainboard. If it is, and the screen doesn't light up, it's the display panel.
A local shop can probably test for you -- some may provide a free repair estimate. If you're going to try repairing this yourself, a 15" panel is likely under $100 -- or perhaps $150 if it's 4K -- vs. a mainboard, which is more likely to be north of $500, possibly quite far north if it's a fast i7 and advanced GPU.
A51-06
5 Practitioner
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3.1K Posts
1
August 22nd, 2020 16:00
Power + D to run the B.I.S.T test and see if it shows a picture?
then I’d try hooking it up to an external monitor like you said.
TringyHard
1 Rookie
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2 Posts
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August 22nd, 2020 16:00
So I think I was impatient. After leaving it shutdown for 20 minutes plugged in, I restarted it and it was working again. My hypothesis is the backlight wouldn't turn on because it just had too little power in the battery and it has a minimum level requirement.
Thank you guys for the advice, I'll keep that in mind for any future issues.