Display faded to black [X205-S9349]

Hello there

I have been a content user of Toshiba Satellite X205-9349 for two and half years so far. Unfortunately, nothing good lasts for long.

Yesterday everything was perfectly fine. Before shutting down my laptop I decided to go to a bathroom. When I returned, however, I found my laptop already turned off. Well, sort of - the power leds were still smiling at me.

My best guess is that backlight lamp(s) (CCFL) is/are dead. The display is almost unnoticeable. I have to look at it with a lamp one inch away to see the desktop. A `function button` regulating brightness does not do anything at all - there is no visible change in brightness according to my watchful eyes.

What is more, I noticed that when laptop is switching on there is a small, barely noticeable flash of light in the right bottom corner of the screen, however it disappears as fast as it appears.

Besides all that the laptop is running perfectly fine. I am using it at the moment, with an external display connected though.

Thus I have got a few questions:

Does anyone know whether there is only one or few lamps in my laptop's monitor? Has anyone experienced what I have and is able to confirm my suspects?
Or maybe the stabilizer/converter in the display is rather the case (sorry, English is not my native language, I do not know the technical word) and the only way to get my display back is to replace the matrix?

Is there any way of safe checking what broke down perhaps...?

I hope that my description is the most helpful for you to settle my concerns.
I am a bit hesitant to go with my laptop to the service point - in my country people do not hold your electronic equipment in high regards, really, and I suppose they would take my laptop for a whole month, giving it back just in the deadline, and though it will be working it is going to be full in scratches and they will take quite a charge for all of it.

 

Hey there, something alike happended to me today, mine is a AMD 64 L300D, so I was installing Ubuntu desktop edition, the 8.10,...I was speaking at the phone to a friend and the widescreen just faded to black, I moved the mouse in circles, but nothing happened....then I decided to try to turned off, and I felt nothing happened inside....tried to turned on, nothing happened....the fan was off, everything is dead, I hope this is just a matter of a security mechanism on the bios, so with just open it and reset the bios by unplugging some item on the notebook motherboard....something alike the Desktops PC motherboards, when Bios is getting troubles...try that, open it and try to reset bios and tell me if it works....I think this is a security mechanism...because the manufacturer before release the product makes a quality test to its items, so they have no problem, besides, mine....I just bought it and I dont think this is a manufacturing problem....

saludos from cuba

 

Sounds like the screen inverter is gone, google it up, you should be able to find the part. This happened on one of my older laptops, I found the part, but decided to get a new computer.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Toshiba-Satelli...mputing_LaptopAccess_RL?hash=item120363752594

If you go this route, here is the X205 Disassembly Guide
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=179789

Good Luck