Help! I'm scared of the dark!! Dark screen that is.

April 11, 2011 7:39 AM

It's all gone dark here....My Acer Aspire One AOD150 is just out of warranty and the screen will not wake up from sleep. I'm out of tricks and wondering if it's just time to buy a new lappy.

When my netbook went to sleep about a week ago, it refused to wake up the next morning. The screen flashed like it was going to wake up, but nothing actually happened. I then plugged it into a monitor via the vga cord and Voila!! everything was there. Only no matter what I did I couldn't force the display to go back to the netbook. Everytime I tried it just did the slight flash of the backlight and then nothing.

My little netbook is running Windows 7 Enterprise 32-bit. I've installed a new bios, the one ending in 1930, installed new video drivers, and rebooted it a multitude of times in and out of safe mode. I restored Windows back to before the drama, I even tried booting it from a flash drive with Puppy Linux, just to see if anything would work.

The problem is, sometimes it does work. After about a day of fighting with it, the screen magically came back on. That was last Thursday and I haven't turned it off since. Or at least I hadn't until last night. I unthinkingly turned it off and now my screen is gone again.

So is there anything I'm missing? Is this something that means the laptop is really only good to me if I have a monitor to plug it in to? Should I just give up and go get a new one?

I have a lot of work to get done this week and I really don't want to lose another few days randomly trying crap to get this thing to work, but at the same time I don't want to give up hope if it can be fixed.

posted by teleri025 to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Everytime I tried it just did the slight flash of the backlight and then nothing.

This reminds me of the symptoms LCDs experience when the internal capacitors go bad. The fact that the pc is running ok otherwise (and is ok to the VGA port) makes me lean towards a display hardware problem.
posted by samsara at 7:58 AM on April 11, 2011

Hardware problem sounds right. Though I should ask, is this in the VGA port only mode? If I remember correctly, there's mirroring, extending the desktop to the external monitor, display only, and external monitor only.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:27 AM on April 11, 2011

Response by poster: ZeusHumms, I've tried it in the dual as well as the single. On dual, only the monitor works. If I force it to single display on the notebook, nothing happens.

I'm gonna take it apart later today after I'm completely backed up.
posted by teleri025 at 8:30 AM on April 11, 2011

I had a similar problem with my Aspire One just before the warranty ran out. I had to take it to get repaired, and it turned out that one of the screen connectors was faulty. I also read that this was a fairly common complaint with Aspire Ones, though fairly easily fixed. YMMV.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 8:34 AM on April 11, 2011

Best answer: I've had this problem with an Acer too! The black screen, the backlight flicker, the occasional return to glory, and yet everything still functioning with a different output ---- you need to replace the inverter! Here's my first google hit for finding a replacement. Should be about $20 I suppose. Here are some replacement instructions.
posted by molecicco at 8:35 AM on April 11, 2011