Sony Dim Screen

[MrMille]

Guys,

I'm going to go mad on this one.

A white Vaio arrived,
I powered it up off the battery, looked okay
, but a shift key that wouldn't work right.
I replaced the keyboard,
powered up off the battery, and
for about a second or two, the screen is nice and bright,
then very very dark, I can barely see the icons.

When I remove the battery and power up off the mains,
it works fine.

WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I cannot aford to give someone a new laptop

 

[MrMille]

Cheers for that.

I tried that, and with further investigation it appears that the problem does not occur when the battery is removed.

Why?

 

[Simmy]

Perhaps some kind of extreme power saving feature when running off the battery - one that stops you being able to see the screen at all? Tricky one - is the brightness up full using the function key on the keyboard?

So the original problem was the shift key not working properly?

A dim screen usually indicates a faulty inverter, but if the screen is never dim when running off the mains then it's unlikely to be that.

 

[seedubya]

OT question Mr. Mille,

Where do you get your laptop keyboards etc.?

 

[MrMille]

I had an exact match from a sony I bought for spares from a client.

The problem still exists...
When off the mains power, the screen goes dim.

All I did was replace the keyboard, is this my fault?
What would you guys do in this situation?

Here's another issue
If I press the zero 0 key I get a / but if I depress the Fn I get a 0
The whole keyboard layout is screwey.
So I've unstalled the drive, and am restarting, so lets's see what happens...

 

[Skyhooker]

Try putting the original, faulty keyboard back and see if the display problem persists - that would tell you something.

 

[MrMille]

I tried that, the problem still existed

 

[Skyhooker]

Does the power occur when you have the battery installed and the DC power plug connected as well, or only when you have the power cable disconnected and are running off batteries alone?

I'm with Simmy - check the Power Saver settings (sorry for the repeat, but you didn't mention whether you had checked those). I can't imagine that there would be a screen brightness setting that low, but on my Toshiba, the lowest setting is rather dark, and if you're working in a brightly lit room, it seems darker still. I also can't think of how the setting might've changed by swapping keyboards, but weird things happen.

Also, I think the Function keys on some laptops can be used to adjust brightness. Since you're experiencing problems with apparent swapping of key functions, that could be part of the problem. When you swapped back to the old keyboard, did you still get the messed-up key layouts/mapping?

 

[MrMille]

Q/Does the power occur when you have the battery installed and the DC power plug connected as well, or only when you have the power cable disconnected and are running off batteries alone?
A/ Not sure I understand the question.
The screen is bright and working fine when the battery and mains are connected. If mains only it's okay too, if just battery, it's dark.

Q/check the Power Saver settings
A/ Had a look, and they look typical, 'laptop/mobile' with the usual settings.

Q/I think the Function keys on some laptops can be used to adjust brightness. Since you're experiencing problems with apparent swapping of key functions, that could be part of the problem. When you swapped back to the old keyboard, did you still get the messed-up key layouts/mapping?
A/ The layout is a bit messed up, so I set it to UK/Ireland, and I
noticed the Scroll Lock (permanent toggle for the Fn key) was on,
so when I turned that off, I could get all the keys to work.

I'm still none the wiser, but I do appreciate everyones help.

 

[NYJimbo]

Q/check the Power Saver settings
A/ Had a look, and they look typical, 'laptop/mobile' with the usual settings.
.

If you turn off ALL power saving related stuff does the machine function normally with just the battery ?. It almost sounds like something is sensing a battery condition and putting the video to sleep.

You should also check the contacts on the battery and the laptop where they touch. Clean them very gently. Odd as it may sounds you might have bumped something or moved around some gunk on a contact and the battery is not sending something on one pin.

 

[Skyhooker]

Have you tried booting on battery alone into Safe Mode? If everything's fine there, I'd say that narrows it down to software/settings.

 

[MrMille]

I'm after changing the power settings to always on, and upon reboot I got a ialmrnt5 BSOD

 

[Simmy]

Do you get that BSOD in safe mode too? What about if you boot from a knoppix/ubcd4win CD? If its fine during initial boot up, then it sounds like its software/drive related once it boots into windows and it detects its running off batteries.

What about if you connect an external monitor to the laptop? Is it dim on that too?

Sounds like a right PITA to me - hope you get it sorted.

 

[NYJimbo]

I'm after changing the power settings to always on, and upon reboot I got a ialmrnt5 BSOD

Well now you are getting somewhere.

Google "ialmrnt5" and take it from there.

 

[seedubya]

ialmrnt5 errors appear related to a problem with the Intel video driver. Try booting into Safe Mode (if you can get there) and deleting the onboard video from device manager. Reboot into normal mode and install an up to date driver before the existing driver gets re-installed.

When you were replacing the keyboard, you didn't by accidentally f**k up the RAM, did you?

 

[MrMille]

Well now you are getting somewhere.

Google "ialmrnt5" and take it from there.

Sweet Jebus NYJimbo, I've been using computers and Google since Christ was a boy. Thanks for the helpful advice!

I already Googled ialmrnt5 but didn't get any good hits.

 

[MrMille]

ialmrnt5 errors appear related to a problem with the Intel video driver. Try booting into Safe Mode (if you can get there) and deleting the onboard video from device manager. Reboot into normal mode and install an up to date driver before the existing driver gets re-installed.

When you were replacing the keyboard, you didn't by accidentally f**k up the RAM, did you?

Hi seedubya, I don't think I damaged anything.
Funny thing is, now with the battery fully charged, the screen works okay without the mains. Go figure.

The BSOD only occured once, upon reboot, the problem didn't present.

Do you think reseating the RAM might help?

 

[seedubya]

I don't know, tell truth. Don't think so. How did the laptop get so creased in the first place? I wonder have you just happened upon one of those laptops from hell. Y'know the one's that have been abused since day dot but only fall apart when you try to fix them.

 

[MrMille]

I received it, fully charged, and it appeared to power up fine.
Then I removed the top bezel, the keyboard screws,
and put in the keyboard (same part number)
Rebooted, worked fine, left it run for a while, (using the battery, not the mains)
and then when it started to run low on battery charge,
the problem presented. When I removed the battery, and ran from the mains, it was fine.

I suspect it's a known issue for the owner, or unknown, and they always work the laptop off the mains.

How would you guys deal with this?

 

[seedubya]

Tough one. I'd be inclined hand it back, get my money and then say "Did you know that when your laptop is on battery..." and just carry on as normal. If they say it wasn't like that before, you say that's the way it arrived in to you and don't argue or explain just say it and stay quiet.