XPS M1730 Intermitant LCD Backlight Problem

Hi

I have an issue with my XPS M1730. Intermittanly the screen will go black during use.

It is clearly the backlight going out as on very close inspection i can make out contrast of light and dark areas. Plugging in a secondary screen on duel duplicate mod works fine, but laptop remains black.

The laptop screen will suddenly come back on at random, even if left in the corner with no-one using it.

The backlight failure also happens at bootup alot. I found also that leaving the laptop overnight (when backlight failed to come on) that it will not usually come back on, but within minutes of pluggin in the secondary display it will suddenly light up and work ok. It will continue to work till put to sleep/ closed down.

I had this very same issue a few months ago and dell replaced the lcd (and invertot - its a single unit as far as replacement goes). but problem returned. also I had the 8800 sli card replaced previous to that due to video memory failure blue screens.


Would i be wrong to maybe be suspecting the lid close sensor (which cuts the backlight by nature) being the cause rather than faulty backlight/invertor? The invertor is and lcd were already replaced rememeber..

 

You can test if it is the lid by setting the behavior of the lid in the power settings, you can set it to standby and see if you laptop goes to standby without closing the screen. However, if the screen is displaying things but it is just dark, probably is the back light problem again and you should contact Dell if it is still on warranty.

 

I thought of that, but then wondered what would happen if it is the lid sensor.. Id be in a never ending loop of going into stand by whenever i press power on.

I contacted dell and received reply saying they will change the lcd again.. Im just not convinced the issue is with lcd though??

Laptop rarelytravels really, unless im going into office. probably been in its case/in car 3 times since dell fitted screen. so i think it safe to rule out mobility being a cause.

It just so happens one of the hard disks is also being reported by the raid controller as experiencing errors.. happens when underload ie extracting 2 700mb rars at same time. Almost at point just telling dell to replace machine. I don't even use this for gaming, id hate to see how it held up to that!! My older xps-m170 still works perfectly and has done for years.

 

The new screen should fix the problem. It sounds to be backlight issue anyway.

If one the HDD's is having problems I would suggest to run Dell diags or something and if you get an error call Dell with the error code.

 

Ye, I should do that re HD. What keys is it I hold in again at boot to launch dell Diags? Its the disk2 of array that always generates fault.

I just being put of contacting them about HD because i know it means a full re-install. thats days of downtime to restore my working environment, not really something i got time for just now if i can avoid it. data restore takes under an hour its just all the software, libraries, snippets etc.. Nightmare.

 

In my system I press F12 and sellect diags from the boot menu, I am not sure if that one can do HDD too. If you have your Dell drivers CD you can definately use that (boot from it).

If the HDD still works you can make an image back-up and restore it on the new HDD you can use Norton Ghost (if it is still around) or R-drive image
http://www.drive-image.com/

If you use R-drive you can create a bootable CD, boot from it, make an image on an external HDD, and then you can use it to restore your drive. I used the paid version, but the site says that the trial is fully functional.

Your downtime will be about overnight to make the backup, and until noon-early afternoon to restore, depending on our HDD size.

 

thanks so much for information regarding imaging of current HD. I will get/purchase r-drive if you recommend. I have always been put of hard disk imaging as i tried a util years ago that did everything but after restrong the hard disk failed to read and no amount of utils would recover. But that was years ago and probably just a once off, but its those sort of things that make you ever hesitant.

 

I used R-drive once for backup/restore and I am very pleased with it. You can always try it for 15 days; you can at least do a backup and see if you like it that far. A nice feature of R-drive is that you can mount an image as a virtual drive and restore individual files (however it is kinda slow). I am sure if you test your image after creating you are not going to have any problems.

I would act sooner that later on an HDD backup, again it is free to do one and it wouldn't take much of your time if you leave it overnight.

 

Well, i downloaded r drive image (even registered as it was cheap) I tried a dummy run on my old xps m170 and it worked a treat.

I just had to take image on to usb hdd, boot up of the rdrive boot cd that it creates and browse for my imag and let it run for a while.. nothing too it.

I then installed on my m1730 and took an image from within windows with no problem.

After dell came and replaced hard disk and lcd i then proceeded to boot of the startup disk only to find r drive dosent see my raid 0 array, instead it sees two seperate hard disks thus will not allow writing of a 400gb image on to 200gb disk!!

I thik its a lost cause. I attempted to load a clean vista in the hope i could do the restore from system disk in some forcefull option but it just attemps to restart rdrive into startup mode again.

 

finally got it.

Was able to build a bartpe boot disk using correct intel matrix drivers (manf supplied ones - dell) and also included rdrive in the build using the bartpe inf thats in the install dir.

simply boot up of the cd into bartpe version of windows and ran rdrive to do restore onto now reconised raid array.

 

Unisual problem RyGa with the backlight.

Can u please post back if the new LCD resolves the issue.

Have you done a clean install? Is there any chance it is software related?