BillW50 wrote:
On 5/28/2010 11:05 AM, Ben Myers wrote:
On 5/28/2010 10:25 AM, John wrote:
The display on my 5630 is dim - not completely dark but probably
only about
30 to 40% as bright as it used to be.
Having googled for what causes dim and dark displays in laptop
screens (after making sure it wasn't the lid close switch) I
decided to go for the
cheapest things first, so I bought a brand new inverter board.
Although it's
definitely the right one, it's actually worse than the existing
inverter in
that it strobes a bit. Doesn't do anything for my problem - the
screen is neither brighter nor darker, just a bit stroboscopic. Hmm
... So, I then buy a secondhand (but guaranteed tested and working)
video cable
from Ebay and replace that. Still no change - the screen is still
as dim, whether used with new or old inverter. Hmm again ...
Oh, at this point I should say that I've checked the voltage between
pin 1
of the inverter input and ground (which, I believe, should roughly
be between 10 and 20 volts) and got 19.36V - so we know that the
inverter is getting the correct feed from the mobo.
I then look at changing the CCFL backlight tube but (a) can't find
one and
(b) even if I could, I've read many horror stories of breaking the
LCD panel
whilst trying to change the tube, so I decide to bite the bullet and
buy a
whole new LCD panel because they come with a new tube already in
them - and
I might as well upgrade from the old matte screen to a new glossy
one if I'm
going to do this 
)
Guess what? Yep, you guessed right - still fekkin' faulty!! Display
is still
only at about 30 to 40% brightness - and that's with any
combination of new/old video cable and new/old inverter.
Any other ideas folks?
TIA
John
Some brands of laptops (IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads come to mind) have a
pair of key combinations to brighten or dim the display. With the
Thinkpads, fn-Home brightens the display and fn-End dims it.
Some brands of laptops, e.g. Dell, have LCD brightness controls in
the BIOS, one setting when on battery and another when on wall power.
Not sure what the Acers have built in to control LCD brightness, but
maybe the brightness is on a low setting? ... Ben Myers
Hello John! While I was reading I kept saying no it is the lamp, the
lamp (well most low brightness is mostly because of the lamp)! Then
you got to the lamp and I thought oh no! Ben is right of course, I
would have checked that first before doing anything else though.
Gee John! The only thing left if everything else was okay is the
motherboard. The motherboard causing this problem is really rare.
Are you sure that was a new LCD panel? Or was it used? As the lamps
gets dimmer and dimmer overtime. Many will run for about 18 months if
you run them 24/7. Use them less and you can push them 5 years and
more. They are florescent tubes after all and if you use them 50/50
and get 5 years out of them that is pretty good.
Hi guys,
I'm tagging this reply on to Bill's because his is the last in the thread at
the moment. First of all, let me say AARRGGHH!!! - because Ben was right! It
was just a matter of altering the brightness by the key combination of Fn
and right arrow key to increase it (left arrow to decrease). All that time,
money and effort spent and I needn't have done any of it.
Ah well, such is life. I've learned a good lesson today
)
Now, to try and justify my position and recover a bit of self-esteem, I can
say in my defence, your honour, that (a) I had no idea about that key
combination (b) there's an Intel graphics utility installed and within that
there are sliders for brightness, contrast, colour and gamma - but altering
the brightness slider there does _not_ have the same effect at all as the
key combination, which is why I continued thinking something was faulty and
(c) I've never knowingly altered the brightness at all anyway. It's always
been perfect at the default setting and I've had it about 3 years.
It's a complete mystery as to how the brightness was turned down in the
first place and, like I said, I didn't know about the key combinations, but
it's all sorted now so a big 'thank you' to all you guys, especially Ben.
Cheers
John