I’m a bit baffled by this. Hopefully someone here knows more than I do and can help.
The majority of the time when I power on my Inspiron 9100, the LCD screen doesn’t light up. Sometimes I hear POST Beep codes too and the computer itself fails to boot, but sometimes it actually makes it all the way to Windows (I can hear the startup sounds even if I can’t see a thing).
However, if I keep powering the laptop on and off, EVENTUALLY the screen comes to life and then everything works fine. Once it has booted up and the screen is working, it continues to work without any issues and will run a full month with no problems whatsoever. Ok, so I tend to jiggle the screen back and forth while I’m powering it on and off, but who knows whether that just makes me feel better or if it actually has some type of impact in getting the screen to eventually work.
I opened up the display and checked all the connections and they seem to be tight, so no loose wires anywhere (but I would expect the screen to flit in and out during regular use if that was the case?).
Finally, tonight I tried plugging an external monitor into the VGA output and got a picture, so I’m not sure you can blame it on the vid card (though maybe you still can).
Anybody have any clue what might be wrong here? Thank you to all those wiser than me who can lend a hand.