Backlight problem or??? On an Inspiron E1505

Hi all,

I hope that someone out there has some advice for me. I'm not super techie, so I apologize if I get terms incorrect!

My computer is a Dell Inspiron I6400 (E1505). Periodically, the laptop screen starts up black. I will see a bit of the Dell start page first, then black. Most of the time, this happens at startup only and I often can continue to hard boot until the screen comes up fine. At that point, I can work with no problems for the rest of the day. Occasionally, the screen will go black while I'm working, but this is rare.

I have had the inverter replaced with no change. Postings I've read on this forum suggest that the backlight is going bad.

However, when I connect to an external monitor and the screen starts up black on the laptop, all I have to do is toggle (FN+F8) between the external monitor and the laptop monitor and then the laptop screen lights up and works perfectly (both the laptop and external monitor light up with the desktop portrayed). That seems to me like the backlight works, it's just not being "told" to light up. I don't know why the external monitor would "turn on" the laptop monitor.

I have done the usual stuff and some other suggestions I found on this board:

Changed the brightness settings in the control panel

Changed my quickset to always on

Lowered the resolution of my screen

Set screen saver to blank

Turned down the brightness settings

Did a custom diagnostics test (only problem was with my DVD/CD drive-a problem I'll have to tackle next)

I have NOT checked the power cable to the laptop screen. I'm too chicken to take my computer apart! But, anyway, it seems to me it's getting power because it works fine when an external monitor is hooked up.

Please help if you have any insight. I don't want to spend $400 to replace a screen when it is really a motherboard or video card issue.

BTW, my laptop is out of warranty, unfortunately.

Thanks, Chryss