LCD stays on when lid shut, Inspiron 9300

I am wondering if this is a common (or worse, by design) situation: On my Inspiron 9300, when I close the lid, the LCD panel stays lit.

My wife's gateway machine instead powers off the LCD, as I thought all notebooks did.

Is this a problem with my unit? Is this by design? (any ideas as to why?)

Also, I've noticed that, if I power the unit on, close the lid and wait for the boot sequence to finish... if I open the lid, the screen stays black (powered off)?

It is very annoying when it happens; I have to try to get windows to shutdown by memory of the appropriate keystrokes.

 

It isn't suppose to stay on, but mine does also. The LCD is suppose to turn off once the lid is closed beyond a certain point. I'm not sure how to fix it or why it does it, but I know that flashing the BIOS is suppose to work. On mine, I seem to have a problem when I reformat. Sometimes I get it fix, and sometimes I don't. Then when I reformat again, the problem goes away.

On the second issue, try closing the lid if it is black, and then slowly reopening it. This problem has occurred on mine as well as other users. The last time i reformatted, that problem was fixed.

I really don't have an explanation.

 

what do you have xp set to do when you close the lid?

 

You may have something on the background that keeps it on. For instance, I use AS/400 at work and if I have a session open, I won't go into standby when I close the lid, but if I finish the session, i.e. close the AS/400 then I can go to standby.

 

I'm going to reply to the previous three posts at once:

First, thank you for your replies!

Currently, this is set to "Do nothing" which I had already checked. Unfortunately, there are only the following two (other) settings: Stand-by and Hibernate. It would be nice if the option "Power off LCD" would be added.

I don't want to stand-by or hibernate, at least not when the lid is closed, just power the screen off. My wife's gateway does this, many other notebooks I have seen do this... why not the i9300?

Good point. I hadn't really thought about this before, but, I would figure that it would work sometimes and not others. The screen saver will activate, but that is regardless of the position of the lid.

Well, I'm glad I'm not alone on this one. However, the hit and miss of it is discouraging. I guess I can check on Dell to see if a new bios is available (wasn't last time I checked). I'd really rather NOT reformatting, lol, ugh.

Thanks again! Anyone else experience this?

 

Update: I contacted dell support *rolls eyes*

They suggested I reset the bios: reboot, hit F2, on bios screen, hit Alt-F, exit bios and save changes.

Not sure what this did, but it seems to have cleared up an issue I had with a couple tray programs not starting up. LOL

Still didn't fix the LCD issue.

Installed the "latest" bios, as per the tech's suggestion. Still no luck.

Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. (ok, not really)

 

If flashing and all that jazz doesn't work it may be something mechanical that would have to be fixed. There must be some switch or something that closing the lid activates to tell the computer to turn off the monitor. Also, if you don't want to have to get the laptop fixed you could try a workaround. Try out Wizmo. It let's you make a batch file that you can put in your taskbar or on your desktop and just run it when you want the monitor to turn off, right before you are going to close the lid.

http://www.grc.com/wizmo/wizmo.htm

 

OMGosh, now why couldn't the Dell Techie tell me this???

* ducks and squints *

and why didn't I find this searching???

Apparently the issue is that Dell has made this a software function, not a hardware function. Kudos to Dell for doing this, because this is more flexible (perhaps even user configurable).

I found that the ATI HotKey Poller service was shut-off in the Services Control Panel. Reenabling that now operates the LCD panel correctly with regards to the lid being closed / opened.



I hope others can find this with less hassle than I had.

 

LOL, nice fine. I would have never thought of looking the services for the fix. How did you figure it out?

 

Well, I realized it is an ATI video card...

and had that nagging feeling that *I* did something wrong... AGAIN...

So I went poking around all the places I would have changed something...

Sure enough, I remember turning off (setting to disable) the service. Of course, I never noticed a difference, because this has always seemed to be a problem. Alas, I reneabled it... closed the lid... :O OMGosh!

* slaps forehead *

(I keep telling my self to stop messing around with stuff, does it work, *NO*)

I think I've learned more about computers by trial and error than any other method! This time, my error and subsequent trial is just so *public*, rotfl

 

i have a small executable that i got from samurize.com's download section. i have a shortcut on my quicklaunch bar that launches it. the executable turns off my LCD until i move the mouse/trackpad/hit a key

do you want it?

 

Well usually this is the best way to learn stuff especially with computers. It's just a little better if you have a backup computer in case you do something really dumb and need to look for a fix on the internet!

 

Mine works but resets the screen rez!?! All Icons on the right side of the screen are thrown to the left. I have the nvidia drivers.

I set mine back to standby and all's well. My Gateway, HP, and old Latitude simply turns the screen off, as it should, on "do nothing".