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Worst case scenario, you could plug in an external monitor. That will help if you are using it at home, but not if you want to take it on the road.

Bought a 24″ Samsung monitor. Beautiful. Should have done this 7 years ago. Also ordered a new laptop screen to keep the unit portable.

He gets the job done, doesn’t he. Is the inverter part of the display screen, or a separate part?

That sounds like the inverter cable could have become damaged or the connection is coming loose, but it’s the first I’ve heard of a delayed screen problem – usually the screen has problems from the get go.

It has been reported as a common problem on some laptops with the screen being opened and closed over time.

Here is the Service Manual if it will help http://www.manualslib.com/manual/553428/Dell-Vostro-1700.html

Thanks for the link to the service manual: difficult to read in Chrome. The Dell chat guy said to replace the display, but then phoned to say it is out of stock. The service manual makes it look to be a rather daunting procedure. Could not find the inverter cable in the manual. Hate to give up on a notebook that is only 7 1/2 years old with factory XP, especially after upgrading with 4 G of memory and a SSD. Thanks again for the help.

As far as I know, the Backlight or Inverter either work or they don’t, but as this takes a few minutes to manifest – Heat comes to mind.

Possibly a high resistance reducing the power to the screen ?

Does moving the screen backward and forwards have any effect on the illumination ?

Unless anyone else has any ideas, I think you’re going to have take this in for repair unless you are adept at opening it up and checking connections.

Answer: Moving the display back and forth temporarily somewhat improved the illumination. I suppose I could (should) remove the hinge cover and look for resistance problems?

Things aren’t really too bad right now. I can pick up the laptop when running and move it without any concerns about gyroscopic effects on a hard drive. Rather convenient not having to shut down or put in standby, which did not always shut down the hard drive. Life is good.

Was not willing to risk a personally owned >$1500 laptop on the BIOS flash. Safer to just have one SSD and use external 2 TB drives for backup and cold storage. Big problem was getting new SSD to boot:

1. Made both drive and partitions backups on WD 2 TB external drives using Acronis WD edition. It recognized my brand new WD drive, but not my 3-year old model. I can back up to old WD drive, but only when new drive is connected to the system. ‘Verified’ all backups.

2. New drive would not boot after restore.

3. Used Acronis ‘Add a New Drive’ tool to repartition and reformat the new SSD, increasing the C: drive from 40 GB to 80 GB. This was tricky, as the old drive had an OEM partition at the front, and a Dell ‘MediaDirect’ partition at the end, both hidden.

4. Restored the whole drive, and the individual partitions to the new SSD: it still would not boot either way.

5. Restored the MBR, OEM partition, and the C: system partition one at a time: still would not boot.

6. Reinstalled the OEM and system partitions again, making both active: it booted from the SSD.

It was worth the trouble, as the laptop is now the fastest I have ever run. I did not have to reinstall 6 years of software. The Acronis partitioning and reformating aligned the partitions, which I checked by dividing the offsets by 4096 and getting an unit number. The Intel tool pronounced it 100% healthy, with 100% useful life. It also has a trim function for XP. So far so good.

John

Try Symantec’s Norton Removal Tool to get rid of the remnants of the Symantec product (which is renowned for not un-installing properly using ‘Add or Remove Programs’).

Rick,
It made me do the ‘Add or Remove Programs’ again, but then got rid of the remaining vestiges. It now boots faster, and without the yellow icon in the tray, or the ‘disabled’ warning. With programs like this that tie up 99% of my cpu, it’s not clear what they are protecting me from. Good riddance.
John

John G,

This was one of my toughest ever, but ServiWin worked. I had tried to uninstall Symantec last fall because it would no longer update, but apparently unsuccessfully. Starting with the drivers utillity, I changed ten Symantec drivers to “Manual.” The system booted much faster, but after five minutes went to 100% CPU. I went back and “Disabled” all ten drivers, and the CPU usage went high while things loaded, but then dropped down to ~25%. I then went to the services utility and disabled all seven Symantec services. The system boots much faster still, and settles down to 1% CPU. This 13-year old system is usable again! The Symantec icon is still present on the task bar, and the disabled warning comes up after 5 minutes, but the program is behaving itself; must be called from the registry? I am impressed and thankful.

John

Try disabling Windows Update.

Jerry

I’ve switched it off-on-off multiple times. It also showed up on the clean boot screen, and I shut it down again.

Jerry, thanks for the link. I’ll give it a try tomorrow.

John

Jerry and jwitalka,
Tried the clean boot procedure: First hid the microsoft stuff and shutdown the rest of the non-microsoft. Still 100% cpu. Then shut down all but 2 essential Microsoft: still 100% CPU. Booted into another user: still 100% CPU. What could this be: 100% CPU with all others shut down, but only 1% with safe mode boot?

rje49,
Certainly a BIOS problem is possible, but when i first put the new SSD in bay 2, it was not partitioned or formatted, and the laptop would not boot even to the F2 or F12 point. Just to test the drive, I removed the old drive from bay 1, replaced it with the new SSD, and then partitioned and formatted it, followed by a Win-XP installation. Two active partitions could possibly be a problem from this point on. I will try flashing the BIOS, but not until I get my old desktop running again. Thanks all for your suggestions. John

mrjimphelps, I used the shell program, but after disabling all the non-microsoft shells, it is still 100% cpu. Any suggestions of suspicious Microsoft?

Try the Clean Boot diagnostic procedure:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353

Jerry

Jerry, thanks for the link. I’ll give it a try tomorrow.

John

Hi Jean,
My BIOS allows me to chose drive bay 1 and/or drive bay 2 for boot. I have it set for drive bay 1 only, and it still will not boot with both drives in place. I wlll probably update the BIOS; nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong… It is probably safer to just run with the SSD in bay 1 if I can install the drive image on the SSD with the ACRONIS True Image WD Edition from my 2 TB WD My Book, and use the 2 TB external drive for my file collection. It would be nice to have a large drive in drive bay 2, and store my current Seagate HDD for when the SSD dies. I do not want to risk my only laptop on a BIOS update until I have something else that will run. Thanks for your input.
John

Well, having 2x Active partitions, one on each of 2x drives, shouldn’t prevent boot and it shouldn’t prevent either drive from being detected by the BIOS. I see your topic on the Dell forum, keep us updated, eh?

Satrow, I’m trying to decide whether to risk it all by updating the BIOS from A05 to A07. I’m sure you guys must have some opinions. If you don’t here from me for awhile, you’ll know I tried and failed…