Laptop screen

[jbuffett]

I am helping out a friend with a IBM Thinkpad. Yesterday the screen went very dark. You can really not read anything on the scree. Nothing changed yesterday. She was using it and stepped away and came back and it was dark. I hooked it up to a monitor and it is working fine. It seems to be a hardware problem because it is dark throughout the book up. Right from the start. Is this a fixable problem and if it is how do you do it. I have very limited experience with laptops. Any help would be great.
Tom

 

[Blujacket]

Look for a combination of the Fn key plus another key with the same color marking on it that signifies Brightness and Contrast. Used together you can make changes, just as was necessary to get the external monitor to work.

It could also be the inverter between the motherboard and LCD panel is going out.

 

[jbuffett]

thanks for the reply -- I have tried the fn and f7 keys and they do not make the problem any better -- When I do try it I get a couple of seconds of a red tint to the screen (whick I can read better) but then it goes back to black

 

[rclarke250]

How old is the laptop? Most of the IBM laptops have a 3 year warranty. Most likely it's the invertor or the lcd pannel. And everything is repairable a better question would be if it is worth repairing compared to replacing.

I shall use google before asking stupid questions!

 

[Lemon13]

sounds like the backlight is gone, do a rma if you still have warranty.