Laptop w/ *REALLY* Dark Screen

[TruckStuff]

My wife's grandmother gave me a laptop she was no longer using. Its a pretty nice laptop (Toshiba Sattelite 1135), w/ one major problem. The screen is so dark that you can barely see that anything is there; if you hold it in the right light, you can see that Windows is functioning normally. I've tried turning up the contrast on the keyboard. I tried plugging in the power thinking it might be a power saving thing, and I tried cranking the screen brightness in the power-save settings. Nothing has worked so far. The screen isn't cracked or anything, so I really think its a brightness/contrast issue.

I'm hoping someone here has some good advice on something else I might try. In the mean time, I'm off to Google...

[ZYFER]

If you know how to work on laptops, open it up and disconnect the cable from the LCD to the motherboard. Then reconnect it, many of times I have seen this work for Toshiba notebooks.

[Shadow250]

the switch that turns off the backlight could be sticking. i had a person come to me with a toshiba a couple weeks ago with that problem.

[TruckStuff]

Originally posted by Shadow250
the switch that turns off the backlight could be sticking. i had a person come to me with a toshiba a couple weeks ago with that problem.

So how did you fix it?

[Pugsley]

Thtat or the CCFL tubes have been consumed and need to be replaced along with the inverter, or it could just be the inverter.

[Shadow250]

i took a long safety pin and picked at the switch until it popped up.(it was loccated next the hinge) then filed the the plastic peice off that pushes it down so it wouldnt stick again cuz it kept sticking even with a tiny bit of wd40. the owner didnt care since she didnt really use standby mode anyway.