Thinkpads Forum

I have an X200 that's in perfect condition except for one annoyance: a buzzing screen. It's a high-pitched buzz that comes from directly under the bottom of the screen.

Here a few things I notice:

-- I can push lightly on the case just under the screen and the buzz gets softer.
-- If I have the unit plugged in and screen brightness 100% then there is no buzz at all.
-- With unit plugged in buzzing starts immediately when I move screen brightness lower than 100%, and gets louder the lower the brightness goes.
-- With battery power I get the buzz even at 100% brightness, but otherwise it's similar to AC power, i.e., buzz gets louder the lower the brightness is set.

Is there some (hopefully simple) way to fix this? Thanks for any suggestions.

Have you ruled out software by going into BIOS and adjusting the brightness? If it still buzzes in BIOS then we know that Windows (or Linux...not sure which OS you use) is not the problem. Then it would be hardware and the buzzing you are describing sounds like the inverter is faulty.

Is your X200 second-hand or have you been the sole owner?

Thanks for the reply.

I hadn't checked while only in BIOS setup, but I just did and the problem seems to be the same there. I'm running Win7/64 on the machine.

It's a little hard to tell whether the sound in BIOS is exactly the same since the fan was running in BIOS setup. I recently got the TPFanControl utility because the fan was on, seemingly needlessly, almost all the time. Now that the fan is usually off when I run Win7 I notice the buzzing more; the fan had to some extent been masking (or intermingling with) the screen buzz so I've noticed the screen buzz more since fan has been on less.

I am the second owner of the machine. I got it off ebay a year and a half ago, came from a lot of machines that had a corporate owner, didn't appear to have been used at all before I got it, battery held full charge with minimal cycles and condition was flawless. Partly because of the fan noise, it has yet to take over as my primary machine. But I have the fan issue figured out now and screen buzz is only problem left. The buzz is also really only a problem when the machine is on battery power, since at 100% brightness using AC power it's perfectly quiet.

Buzzing is usually associated with inverter on its last leg.

Swap it, they're inexpensive enough nowadays.