E1505 screen lighting problems

I inherited an old but working E1505 with Vista. Lately, when I boot it cold, the screen flickers and goes black. I open n shut the lid several times and the screen will flicker. Once the system heats up and after the open n shut routine the screen eventually remains lit and flickers not more until I shut it down. Is this an inverter, LCD, backlight, micro switch, other problem? Any ideas how to diagnose and troubleshoot the problem?

 

Probably inverter or backlight. If you're lucky it could just be the display cable, too, but I doubt it.

It's kind of hard to test for the former two without known good parts: I'd recommend buying a new inverter, testing it, and if that doesn't fix the issue, then you can consider replacing the LCD or, if you want to get into it, just the backlight.

 

Hello fjcutuli
My name is Anue and I work for the Social Media and Community Team at Dell.

From the information provided by you, we understand that you have an issue with the display, where it flickers, at the fisrt instance of booting.
As suggested in the above post, it could be an issue with the LCD or the LCD cable, however you could try updating the Video driver and flashing the BIOS.

You could also, try connecting an external monitor to check if the display is fine or if the display is still flickering.

For the drivers update, please click on the link below and it would take you to the page which has the different video drivers. Please choose the appropriate video driver and install the same.
The link also has the download and the installation instructions.
Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United Kingdom]

And please click on the below link for the BIOS update. This as well, has the download and the installation instructions.
Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United Kingdom]

Kindly update the results and we would be glad to assist you further.
Thanks & Regards
Dell_Anue_A
Dell Social Media Responder
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@DellCares - YouTube

 

If you connect an external monitor to the VGA port on the back of the Inspiron 6400/E1505, then plug in and turn on that monitor, hold down the Fn key and tap F8 a couple times, you should get a display on the external monitor, with this overlay
...
that shows the graphics processor unit is good...
if you shine a flashlight on the LCD panel and can see your OS desktop, you can assume you have either a bad inverter or bad fluorescent backlight tube. I don't know how the average do-it-yourselfer can test either of those without swapping in known good parts, but since you can find backlight-tubes + inverter-board combos for the Inspiron 6400/E1505 on ebay for under $15, I would just change them both out (if the GPU checks good).