I'm trying to fix a friend's computer. It's a laptop and it has a small nub in the area between the keyboard and the edge where the monitor hinges. Normally when you close the laptop, the monitor pushes down against the nub and turns off the screen. The problem is the laptop is open, and the screen is still dark. When I manually press and release the nub, it will flicker on very quickly. Basically the only time the nub registers that the laptop is open is when I press down and release - near the end of the release the screen lights up. I'm certain the monitor is fine. When I first heard the problem I was hoping I could fix it through the OS route - settings, drivers, etc. After trying it I think it's a hardware problem with the nub. I've played with it for 2 hours, I'm getting nowhere, I couldn't find anyone on Google who had a similar problem (that's what the Viagra ad said). Any ideas besides opening it up? I've been troubleshooting by hooking up an old external monitor, I'm probably just going to give it to her instead of that. She doesn't use it much except at home for some basic web surfing.
It could be that the backlight on the laptop screen burned out; I had this happen to my wife's computer and it took me a while to come to that conclusion. Short of replacing the backlight (no cost estimate, sorry) or using an external monitor, I'm not sure there's anything else that can be done.
Thanks. I made sure it wasn't the backlight. Like I said, it comes on perfectly fine when I press the nub, albeit for a few seconds. I'm pretty sure it's the connection between the nub and motherboard (or whatever eventually connects the two), but maybe someone has advice from left field that I never thought of. It's an Acer 5100 laptop BTW. Seems like a lot of people have problems with the monitor, and I'm guessing some have the same behavior as this situation but they just don't realize the nub thing.
