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11293
March 3rd, 2012 07:00
Losing internal display after power cycle
My laptop often forgets that it has an internal display when powering it up after a power down or hibernation. When I power it up again the display fails to come on (I've now memorized the keyboard sequence to shut it down tidily!). The computer will boot up normally on an external monitor connected to the VGA port. Using the external monitor the desktop's properties will offer only the external monitor as a display - it has no record of the internal display, and so I can't switch back to the internal display. The curious part is that the computer will always boot up normally on it's internal display IF I disconnect the AC adapter and remove the battery for about 30 seconds first. It doesn't sound like a hardware fault to me.
Anybody have any thoughts about how I could fix this problem short of rebuilding the HD from scratch.
Spec: Dell Inspiron laptop 510m 1.5GHz Pentium M, 2GB memory Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics. Windows XP Home + SP3 O/S.
Neil.
(IT literate user hoping to become just a user again;-)
Neil48
3 Posts
1
March 12th, 2012 07:00
It turns out that the fault was caused by the lid switch sticking in the 'lid closed' position. Touching the actuator pin to bring it up fixes the problem every time. The permanent fix was to clean the dirt from the hole the pin slides up and down in. Removing the battery only fixed the problem because there was enough flexing of the chassis to free the sticking switch when I turned the computer over. There's only about 2mm of travel on the actuator pin and it's difficult to spot when the pin has not returned to it's 'open' position.
Sometimes it's the simple things that fool me:-)
Neil.
Neil48
3 Posts
0
March 3rd, 2012 07:00
I've run the Dell diagnostics at start-up (when the internal display is running) and everything gets a clean bill of health.