ClaudSglass

Hello there, first time poster, short-time reader.

I bought a laptop (Dell Inspiron 1520) for my mother for Christmas (2007), and up until now it's worked like any new piece of electronics should. Recently, however, a display problem has cropped up which I suspect is a backlight issue, yet I have insufficient experience with laptops to be able to definitively say what the problem is.

In short, the display does not like bright colors. It will often (but not always) go mostly pink, with color distortion on the other shades, whenever a lot of white is displayed on the screen. (For instance, when I first loaded the TSF boards today, the display was mostly pink, and sometime around typing "new piece of electronics should", it went back to normal.) Changing what's being displayed to a mostly dark palette will fix the problem virtually instantaneously, but switching back to a lightly colored palette will bring the problem back. Until it decides to self-correct, for reasons I have yet to pin down.

I'm confident that she's taken good care of the laptop. She values her laptop at roughly the same level as her children. Maybe more. I certainly hope that the two of us never get placed in some kind of "Sophie's Choice" or "The Good Son" situation. I'm also pretty sure that if I knew exactly what the problem was, that I could probably fix it.

So if anyone here could definitively nail down the problem, or perhaps ask questions that could help narrow down the issue, I would be extremely grateful.

Madcatz

problems like this i've normally seen them as either the motherboard or lcd panel. I've seen the lcd cable give similar problems like what your saying but I'd look at the other two first.

TriggerFinger

hi ClaudSglass,

try it with an external monitor first and see if the it behaves the same when you adjust to bright colors. as for the pink color may be you have backlight problem.

ClaudSglass

Seems to work fine w/ an external monitor. Without going out, purchasing a part and replacing it, is there a way I could definitively tell if it's the backlight or the LCD cable? I'm do computer repair recreationally, not professionally, so I still have difficulty asking someone else to pay for something they don't need.

ClaudSglass

One thing that perhaps I should add- it's not merely a pink hue which appears, it's as if the laptop goes from displaying millions of colors to displaying what looks like a 256 color palette, with a pink background where there should be white. It does go away (and reappear), but it doesn't seem to follow any predictable pattern (for example, it doesn't seem to depend on the laptop being hot or cold (fresh boot), angle of display, humidity, etc.), which makes it very difficult to isolate the problem and solve it.

TriggerFinger

I think it is the LCD (backlight being part of the LCD assembly). I had my share of that in my own laptop. One was resolved by reseating the RAM. On the other I had no choice but replace the whole LCD ( I am no good in backlight replacement ).

When I first encountered the same problem, I checked Google if there are other people experiencing the same. True enough there were others and the solution is to replace the LCD. example: http://www.laptoprepair101.com/lapto...mment-page-16/

As for the cable you can do a visual check. The cable could be the culprit but very slim chance. You can only tell exactly if it is the cable or LCD, if you have extra parts to use like a spare cable or a spare LCD. Other than that, it would be impossible (at least for me).