# Lights are very Dim - Screen barely seen



## [email protected] (Aug 2, 2007)

Hello Tech support friends,
Can you help get my lights turned up???
I have a Toshiba Sattelite laptop with Windows XP purchased in 2002. This morning I was working on trying to figure out why my favorites were rearranged on our router´s homepage. I typed in jigzone and completed a puzzle. I left my computer for 5 minutes to check on my 2 year old. When I returned to the computer the puzzle page was there, but the lights were so dim that it was like seeing through fog.

There is no dimmer switch anywhere on the laptop. I tried rebooting. It starts with no problem, but the lighting stays tha same. I was able to go into control panel, but it only has features for resolution and increasing the size of the windows. 

Am I overlooking a simple solution?? :4-dontknow My husband checked to make sure that the computer was plugged in and not running on battery power.

I am using my husbands computer to send this. PLEASE help me. My husband is giving me time to try to solve it before he tinkers with it. Sometimes when others tinker they make things worse. If this can be fixed simply without a bunch of trial and error, that would be great. 

HELP! Thanks.
C. Pete


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## 1 g0t 0wn3d (Jan 31, 2007)

You know it sound like the backlight died, try hooking it up with the monitor you are on now.


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## [email protected] (Aug 2, 2007)

Dear Friend,
Thanks for your suggestion. We would have to have the right kind of cable to hook up the two computers, which we might not have. I have been googling the problem "dim lights, weak lighting". I came up with a suggestion that the backlighting problem could be the FL SCREEN INVERTER BOARD.

Here is the info that I found:

( Do you have a problem with the backlight on your laptop? If yes, you are not alone, that’s one of the most common laptop problems. In most cases the screen inverter is the culprit. Here are some LCD screen backlight failure symptoms that could be related to a bad inverter board:

- Laptop boots as usual but after some time the screen blacks out. You still can see an image on the screen but it’s very dim. You might even use a flashlight to see it better. Sometimes the backlight comes back for a while but then goes off again. In some cases you can turn the backlight on if you tap rapidly on the lid close switch.
- The screen always stay black and the backlight never comes on but you still can make out an image on the LCD. It’s dark, but the image is still there.
-In some cases you might hear a buzzing noise coming from the area where the inverter board is located, it’s on the bottom part of the display assembly.)

I cannot believe how suddenly the problem happened. Now, I guess we will have to order a new computer part. I WISH THERE WAS SOME OTHER THING TO DO, BUT THIS IS PROBABLY THE PROBLEM: I WILL POST A REPLY AFTER WE GET THE REPLACEMENT PART: WE live abroad and this might take awhile. :sigh:

Thanks for your help.
C.Pete


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## 1 g0t 0wn3d (Jan 31, 2007)

The cable is simply the cable connecting the monitor to the pc you are on you are in no way connecting the pcs togther just using the others monitor that way you can turn off the power saving stuff like dim backlight and see if that helps.


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## [email protected] (Aug 2, 2007)

Dear Friend,
Thanks for the suggestion.
There is no cable to the monitor that I am using because I am on my husband´s laptop. BOTH LAPTOP'S do not have cables connecting monitors. We do have one desktop computer with a separate monitor. However, we have not been using the dim light feature on my PC. It would be helpful if we could double check to make sure that the backlight is the problem..
but we do not think that is possible.

My husband tried to hook my laptop up to his 19 inch monitor and nothing came up. Right now, I have shut down windows completely. I plan to try again in an hour to see if there is any backlight. Also I AM LOOKING UP THE TOSHIBA INVERTER part to see where we can order it. There is a toshiba store an hour from us in the country where we live. We will try there too. 

Will keep you posted.

C. Pete


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