W500 display lid switch problem.

[ThinkpadW500]

Hello,

I have a pretty much maxed out* W500 with a display problem.
What happens is whenever the lid/screen is open, the display blinks on and off rapidly, and while the display is blinking the laptop goes to sleep (or at least attempts to).
the issue occurs with Windows 10 and Windows XP, I have also tried reseating the display cable to no avail.

After thinking about the laptops actions after the screen blinks, I've mostly narrowed it down to the Lid Open/Closed (magnetic?) sensor being faulty and needing repair/replacement by sticking a dead HDD magnet near the switch which seems to be located near the wifi/bluetooth LED's. The problem disappears for a few minuites when i remove the magnet but comes back eventually. (sometimes even starting again with the magnet in place)

Is there a procedure/replacement part i can get to fix this problem?

*Specs:
Core 2 Duo T9900
8GB DDR3 1066
ATI FireGL V5700/Mobility Radeon 3650 512MB
1920X1200 CCFL Backlit display
Fingerprint reader
DVD/RW drive
2.5" HDD's of various sizes with various OS's.
Typically a PCCARD CF card reader and a USB3 Expresscard54 card in the expansion slots on the bottom left.

[atagunov]

Hi, what some people had noticed was that if they have a magnet somewhere on them then passing your hand with the said magnet over a Thinkpad can send it to sleep - as it incorrectly detects this as "lid closed event". Can we rule out this being a case of the said problem? What seems to be triggering this condition? What prompts it to happen? Do you have magnet anywhere on your hands?

[ThinkpadW500]

Hello,

What i meant by that is in order to prevent the system from sleeping when the screen blinks on and off, i had to place a magnet near the sleep switch to force it to stay in the "lid open" position, to prevent the machine from going to sleep and allow me enough time to go into windows power settings to disable the "sleep on lid close".
Without the magnet in place to prevent the machine from going to sleep, the screen flashes on and off rapidly, and while the screen's flashing the system goes to sleep even though i never pressed any button or key related to putting the system in sleep mode.

Anyway, i seem to have solved the problem for now, I've reseated the display connector once again with the screws screwed in only slightly tight, that seems to have solved the problem so far.

Will keep you all updated if the problem comes back.

[modmaster]

Not thinkpad, but I have read some big laptops(Dell, Alienware, Lenovo Legion, GETAC, etc) develop problems with screen connection, this mostly happen with dedicated graphics and it gets worse with time, no reseting of cables will help with this, maybe a GPU reballing and checking if motherboard traces are OK, but that only will buy you another 2-3 months of life.

An example here: https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=pghXirEizCE