This is my Dad's laptop so I dont have ALLL the information, but I have a decent summary of the problem.
Laptop is Dell Inspiron 1520.
He was working on it and suddenly the screen went blank. Tried moving the mouse etc but it wouldnt come back. Shut down (by power button not start-shutdown), started again. Waited a few minutes, same problem happened. Went through this cycle a number of times. At one of the times, perhaps the third, there was an error message. Dont remember exactly what it said, something along the lines of settings have been corrupted, but it included the words 'corrupted', 'restore', and i think 'backup'.
Now when I took a look at it the first thing I noticed was the screen was much darker, kinda like when a laptop is not plugged in to the power. This one was plugged in though, and the taskbar showed it was getting powered directly from the power source. The start menu is on the left side not at the bottom, noticed that seemed to be blinking very slightly. When I opened the browser the whole screen seemed to be having display problems, seemed to keep getting darker and lighter. Finally monitor shut off. When it went off I could very very slighty make out some images on the screen, wasnt sure if the computer was on or this was just the last image that had been on the screen. Shut down and start up again, same thing happened except this time I played music in the background to test. Shut off again however the music kept playing so obviously the computer itself is not shutting down.
I dont know if the display settings are relevant so I'll include them here:
There's a big screen with a 1 in it and a smaller screen with a 2 in it.
The chosen setting is Plug n Play Mobile Internet [screen just shut off so cant see the rest of the name]
There was only one other setting in the drop down. It didnt look particularly relevant though.
It seems like this could be a display issue - the only reason I suspect its not is b/c it doesnt stay a certain way. If the settings are wrong it should stay incorrectly configured, not just shut the monitor off.
Would appreciate any help fellas is this computer is a life line.
Thanks!
Dan
since my last msg ive attached a CRT monitor to the computer. and now the external monitor is staying on while the laptop monitor went off. so the urgency is gone, however the setup is quite awkward. still dont know if its a hardware problem w/ the monitor being bad or a settings problem though.
btw is there some way to attach an external keyboard as well to the laptop?
Laptop is Dell Inspiron 1520.
He was working on it and suddenly the screen went blank. Tried moving the mouse etc but it wouldnt come back. Shut down (by power button not start-shutdown), started again. Waited a few minutes, same problem happened. Went through this cycle a number of times. At one of the times, perhaps the third, there was an error message. Dont remember exactly what it said, something along the lines of settings have been corrupted, but it included the words 'corrupted', 'restore', and i think 'backup'.
Now when I took a look at it the first thing I noticed was the screen was much darker, kinda like when a laptop is not plugged in to the power. This one was plugged in though, and the taskbar showed it was getting powered directly from the power source. The start menu is on the left side not at the bottom, noticed that seemed to be blinking very slightly. When I opened the browser the whole screen seemed to be having display problems, seemed to keep getting darker and lighter. Finally monitor shut off. When it went off I could very very slighty make out some images on the screen, wasnt sure if the computer was on or this was just the last image that had been on the screen. Shut down and start up again, same thing happened except this time I played music in the background to test. Shut off again however the music kept playing so obviously the computer itself is not shutting down.
I dont know if the display settings are relevant so I'll include them here:
There's a big screen with a 1 in it and a smaller screen with a 2 in it.
The chosen setting is Plug n Play Mobile Internet [screen just shut off so cant see the rest of the name]
There was only one other setting in the drop down. It didnt look particularly relevant though.
It seems like this could be a display issue - the only reason I suspect its not is b/c it doesnt stay a certain way. If the settings are wrong it should stay incorrectly configured, not just shut the monitor off.
Would appreciate any help fellas is this computer is a life line.
Thanks!
Dan
since my last msg ive attached a CRT monitor to the computer. and now the external monitor is staying on while the laptop monitor went off. so the urgency is gone, however the setup is quite awkward. still dont know if its a hardware problem w/ the monitor being bad or a settings problem though.
btw is there some way to attach an external keyboard as well to the laptop?
thanks.