Thinkpads Forum

My prob seems to be a variation on other screen probs mentioned elsewhere, and I hope someone can help.

I have a T60 with an XGA screen, running XP with SP2. The machine is still under warranty with about eight months to go. It has worked fine until a few days ago when the screen went what I thought was blank but in fact is very dark: I can just make out an image there but it’s so dark as to be unreadable.

I can restore the laptop screen image to the usual level by Fn+F7 or by suspending it (Fn+F4) and reawakening it but it will only last about ten seconds or so before it goes very dark again. However with the mains supply is disconnected the screen stays on OK.

The laptop screen starts with a red tinge, which I thought might be indicative of backlight or inverter problem but why should it be OK on battery but not on mains? The power setting is for 7/7 for both battery and mains.

Grateful for any help on this one. Invoking the warranty will deprive me of the machine so a home fix would be best. Meanwhile I am using a separate screen which is fine but not a very portable solution.

Welcome to the forum!

Your backlight is on its way out, hence the reddish hue. Send the machine in for a repair, actually LCD replacement.

Hope this helps.

Unusual for a backlight to fail so quickly, but I agree, that's sounds like the problem. Call Lenovo Tech Support and explain the problem exactly as you did here - especially the bit about the reddish hue on boot up. You will be without your computer for 3-4 days, max, but there's really no other alternative.

Well there is one alternative...

You could buy a new machine.

However if it were my machine I'd be on the phone with Lenovo and getting them to send me a box so as I could ship it in for repair. It is pretty early in the life of your machine for the backlight to be failing already.

Have you tried hooking it up to an external display?

Thanks for the tips guys. I'll get on to Lenovo.

It seems that when a screen goes it does so gradually and work off battery and not on mains, rather than be in a go/no go state. Very odd.