ACER Extensa 4630Z - Display

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happyavocado

Estimable
Aug 16, 2014
12
0
4,560
Hello,
I am tinkering with an old laptop and it has a few issues. I was able to boot it up but I got a virus warning. Tried to run antivirus but the screen started going black. Upon further inspection, I have discovered that if I shine a light at the screen I can see (very dimly) that the OS is still running. When I shut the lid and open it back up, the power button has gone to a flashing red-orange. When I press it, the screen will come back up for all of 2 seconds and then disappear again.

I'm stumped because when I open the lid, I can wait 10 seconds or 10 minutes to hit the button and log in... and the screen goes black, comes back up for one second to show me the desktop, and then goes black again. If it was merely a connection issue in the cable connecting display to motherboard, wouldn't it be somewhat time-sensitive?

I restored the laptop from the backup partition (not sure if this was a good idea, but I'm out of ideas). I reseated the battery. Does anybody have any ideas as to what might cause this issue? I can't yet find a cable to connect the laptop to an alternate display but I'm working on it.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

UPDATE: tried to get to Safe Mode but it goes to black screen as well! Could this be the inverter? I got brave and took apart the screen-half to reseat the inverter, but no joy. I might look to replace it but I kind of want to narrow down what is failing before I start throwing money around to fix this thing.

UPDATE 2: tried a power drain -removed battery, held down power button and ran without battery... same thing. I did notice that when the screen is visible, it is looking kind of "pink" and Fn + F6 makes the screen magically - and temporarily - appear.

UPDATE 3: Fn+F6 when pressed twice will make the screen magically reappear - almost 100% of the time - for about one sec. ?! This doesn't sound like hardware anymore but I don't know what to do!

UPDATE 4: bizarre. I found another suggestion which was to hit the left arrow key whilst pressing the Fn + left arrow button repeatedly (to switch displays). Well, the display came back and seemed to be working well, until I had to reboot to uninstall some unwanted antivirus and install the new. The problem has gotten less problematic - I now get a minute or so of screen time before I hit Fn+F6 twice in order to get the screen back.
 
You did a good job for testing your laptop, I'm using my laptop with an external monitor for almost three years now, I purchased the laptop with a broken screen and I paid a good price for it. You will have no problem using your laptop with an external monitor, mouse and keyboard.
 

WenkroyBoy

Estimable
Nov 30, 2015
1
0
4,510
I'm curious if you ever managed to solve this problem as I have a similar problem and though I'm willing to buy a new component I'm not sure wich one is the faulty one.