The lid closure sensor on my inspiron 6000 , was faulty and kept turning off the screen while it was open.(it should only do this if I close the lid of the laptop).

 

I searched online for a solution and realised many people have this problem , with many thinking their screen is not working (if there you can see the windows XP logo while the comp is booting up then u don’t have a screen problem) many people have paid out lots of money to attempt to fix this.

 

I was also shocked that Dell hadn’t put up any solutions and that many people where left in the dark (literally).

 

So I decided to fix the problem myself with no help from Dell.

 

PLEASE NOTE I am  not responsible for any damage that occurs if you copy what I did  and that my solution may have a yet unseen problems , and that this is how I fixed the Dell inspiron 6000 and that other laptops may have different mechanisms .

 

I located the area near the touch pad where the lid closure sensor must be ,, it is  opposite the magnet in the screen.

 

I did some research on the actual device itself , its also know as a reed switch , this means its two slithers of metal that are held in a vacuum, when the magnet in the screen comes close to the reed switch it pulls the two pieces together , completing a circuit and this then switches off the screen. This is also used to put the laptop in standby when you close the lid.

 

So what I did was:

Take the laptop apart to the reach the area that the reed switch is in,, take a record of where every thing goes , put the screws in Tupperware boxes or some thing similar so you don’t get confused.

 

The reed switch on my inspiron is just to the front left of the touch pad, once I got into this part I had to take off the touch pad circuit board part , as the reed switch is connected to the top of this ( you cant even see it until you get the touch pad off).

The reed switch is about 15mm long slither/tube of glass, you can see the two pieces of metal inside it , I took a small pliers and carefully cut the whole thing off the circuit board. This means that the screen will no longer shutdown when you close the lid and that the laptop will no longer go into stand by when you close the lid (I can live with that) but the faulty reed switch will no longer shut the screen down either. Ie problem fixed !

 

I then reassembled the laptop and I have had no further problems.

 

I hope this helps those struggling with this problem and the cost of attempting to fix it.