Screen goes black

[tom101]

Hi,

I've done a search but can't find quite the same problem I'm having with my screen.

My aging T41's latest problem is that the screen goes black, apparently randomly. I can still just about make out whatever is on it very very faintly so it's the light going out. If I then press Fn+F7 twice it comes back, but then it happens again.

Any ideas how to fix this? Or is it time I gave up on the old girl?

Thanks,

Tom

[rkawakami]

From the sounds of it, it's probably an aging backlight (aka, CCFL) or an inverter problem. Pressing the Fn+F7 key combination cycles through the internal LCD and external VGA port. When the external VGA port is enabled and the internal LCD is disabled, that will cut off power to the inverter, which turns off the backlight. Pressing Fn+F7 again will re-enable the LCD and turn the backlight back on (for a short time anyway). Best suggestion that I can give would be to replace the inverter with a known good unit since it's fairly easy to get to and inexpensive; when compared to the cost of replacing the entire LCD panel or swapping out the CCFL. There's several different inverter boards depending upon the LCD in your system; FRU 26P8464 is for the 14.1" XGA and SXGA+ screens, 91P7422 is for the 15" XGA screen, 93P4161 is for the 15" SXGA+ and UXGA IPS screens.

ref: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-46464 (HMM for T40x, T41x and T42x)

[tom101]

Wow! Thanks for such a quick reply rkawakami!

I'll order an inverter.

[craigmontHunter]

It may also be the GPU issue, since I had the same problem, and I reflowed it with a heatgun, and fixed the problem, so if the new inverter does not fix the problem, you need to re-flow the GPU

Good luck (I hope that it is only the inverter)

Jack