Re: [Thinkpad] 600E LCD Display Problem

John -

I had a similar problem with a 600E. If the screen went dark
(power down, suspend, screen off), sometimes I would have
to use the Fn+F7 combination a couple of times to get it to
light up again, sometimes several times. Note that in my
case, the screen would usually light briefly (for perhaps a
second) and then go dark.

It turned out to be the inverter going bad. (I believe this is
a device that steps up the voltage to power the back-lights.)

The machine was then under warranty, and after three tries
IBM diagnosed and fixed the problem.

In my case, the key symptom was that although the screen
was dark (no back-light), you could still see the ghost of
the image on the lcd. I believe Fn+F7 cycles as follows:
   lcd only
   external only
   lcd+external
When cycling through, I could definitely see the difference
between external only (no image on the screen at all) and
lcd (visible ghost image, but no back-light). If this problem
has anything to do with your case, you should also be
able to verify it by plugging in an external monitor to check
where in the cycle you are.

My view is that by cycling through the external-only setting,
the screen would be fully turned off and then back on, giving
the failing inverter another chance to "catch", and power the
back-lights. In my case, once the screen lit up and managed
to stay lit for more than a few seconds, it stayed lit and worked
fine until it was legitimately turned off again (e.g., by a power-
saving screen off or suspend).

Your symptoms don't sound like they match this scenario
exactly, but you might want to take a quick look.

"John Levanger" <levanger@comcast.net> wrote:

> Thanks to all who responded to my question about the 600E's display problem.
> So far, no joy! Here's the deal, everytime I reboot the screen is blank and
> I have to push the Fn + F7 keys to get the LCD to fire up. It seems to be a
> hardware problem, I've adjusted about every software and BIOS setting to the
> same result. Has anyone ever run across this problem before? Is there a
> keystroke combination that will lock the LCD as the default monitor and not
> the external one as it seems to be doing now? This is driving me nuts!
> Thanks in advance.
>
> John Levanger
> Savannah, GA
> ...

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Received on Wed Oct 8 14:18:45 2003