Dark laptop screen

[banana]

Ive had my Dell Inspiron 1150 for about 3 years now (but wouldnt reccommend one to anyone). The screen went dark about 10 months ago and the repair cost was prohibitive so I just plugged in a monirtor and use it as a desktop. No problems at all so far with this . i use it daily -mainly just browsing ,email etc However in the past couple of days the screen has come to life for several minutes at a time.It starts off as a constant display but the degenerates -flckering and then off/on for a while before going completely. When it first went dark either the backlight or the inverter was diagnosed. Surely neither of these are self repairing? Any ideas as to what is going on?

[raith50]

Did you buy direct from Dell if you did you should have taken out the extended warranty (no I do not work for them) I have had similar experiences with Inspirons and 9 times out of ten it is due to the ribbon cable that connects the motherboard to the display fracturing, all Dells have a unique service tag go onto the Dell website and punch in your service tag number you can go to the faqs to see if there has been a product recall or fault notice.

[dodgyshirt]

This is a common fault with all laptops. The ribbon cable connecting the laptop to the screen passes through the hinge and sometimes snags as it does so, pulling the connector off partially at the screen end.
If you catch it early enough, even spraying a little WD40 into the hinge can cure it.
Sometimes the connector, which is only stuck on, can be pushed back into place simply by working the screen backkwards and forwards a few times which is what has evidently happened to yours.