A31 LCD on then off reddish, then clear

[drwho]

sorry to ask again, but i figure with other people that has gone threw the same situation there might be some common grounds to my problem.

CCFL bulb gone, inverter , or some heat issue

reddish screen was my first thought that the CCFL bulb gone, then i recently changed my display setting to try and allow my video port work on my docking station II...changed the setting to allow it to see an external monitor and BANG....my lcd on my laptop came on, clear, no reddish screen, nothing looked wrong....like nothing happened. i thought maybe it was the cause...some setting was no correct. i decided to rebooted and waited about 12-28 min leaving the display on like normal. after about the 20 min the screen went completely DARK, like turn off a light switch. i would hit FN F7 to toggle back and forth between lcd and trying to get it to work on the external monitor.....when switching back and forth....the lcd would display reddish and drop again. the external monitor would not ( only in the dock )

so, my question is this, the reddish display would make you think its the bulb, but how then would it display again clear if the bulb is gone. is it my inverter somehow going and power is not getting to the lcd, is it somekind of heat problem....please if you have had somekind of similar problem it would really help me to determine what is causing it to drop.

could it be some setting that is causing it go dark.

thanks for any help.

[drwho]

nobody has any ideas, ccfl bulb, inverter or somekind of power issue....REALLY NEED HELP PLEASE

thanks

[chris_clark]

I had similar problems with one of my laptops--I don't recall whether it was an a31 or a t23. Eventually it just died. If it develops "character problems", showing different characters than the ones it should (often just 1 bit off in ascii), or red or green line problems, the problem is getting worse and failure is more imminent. I've lost 2 or 3 thinkpads to these kind of problems. Which symptom comes first, seems to vary by machine, and whether the machine develops all the problems varies also.

In any case, I would consider buying a "backup" laptop, i.e. another a31 (or an a30) or even a t23, so that if your laptop fails you can pop the disk in the other one (perhaps as a 2nd hard drive) and not be without a machine. My experience has been that the machines last around another 3-9 months before total failure once the problems start.

My personal guess is that the problem is components wearing out (perhaps something in the power supply), because once the machines die, the repair shops "all" seem to claim that the machine needs a new motherboard. I don't think the problem is strictly heat related, because as the problem gets worse, the red appears even if the machine has been left off for a long period of time. Now perhaps heat cooked the component that is failing, but I think their is some component that is dying....