Overview

laptop flaky black screen, on, maybe boots. description of this problem.

does your laptop hibernate or go into standby mode all by itself? chances are you have a flaky lid switch.

on my mother's old 2004 compaq presario v2000/v2030us laptop, the lid switch became flaky after many "presses".

this 50% fix has now been made a 100% fix. the only prerequisite is that you be able to get at the switch contacts (or at least the switch).

this is a repeat of what's in the disclaimer for emphasis, and to show you that taking apart a laptop is not a walk in the park (may ruin your laptop permanently): I will tell you that in the process of taking apart this laptop (but not my first one) and putting it back together later on (and carefully), the laptop's networking functions no longer worked, and I even reseated the wireless card twice (no wired either, which is built into the mb, which is really mysterious)! you are on your own if you do this!

the laptop I was working on was a gamble, we did it because we didn't want to spend the money on a service center and we knew we didn't mind losing the laptop, we had the data on the hard disk, and we could always take that out and put it in an external drive case. but I got her permission before I started.

about switches

in electronics, switches are rated for a certain number of actuations, and it says so on the data sheet when you buy it. keyboard switches can be rated for 20 million keypresses for a $40 keyboard, or 10,000 if they are cheap. household electrical panel circuit breakers are rated for 1000 actuations (either direction) - just read the specifications. for a lid switch, it may be rated at 1000 actuations, maybe more. so you can figure that there are 2 actuations per day opening and closing the lid. 1000/2=500 days or about a little over 1.370 years. laptop manufacturers don't publish the specs for their lid switches.

for people who like to turn their water heater on and off every day to save electricity, you will get cold showers and be paying for a new circuit breaker every 1 year and 4 months. it doesn't help the heater coil either possibly...

I would say that my mother's laptop's lid switch lasted for about 5 maybe 5.5 years, which as a guesstimate is about 5×365.25×2=3653 to 5.5×365.25×2=4018 actuations.

the switch could be as simple as a leaf switch - a metal contact/pedestal and what looks like a lever that gets pushed down on top of the contact/pedestal. If you have never taken apart a switch, now's the time to learn. there are a number of different types of switch contacts, but basically it's 2 pieces of metal coming in contact with each other, making an electrical connection. just like what you learned in high school making motor circuits and electromagnets. you are making or breaking an electrical circuit which turns something on or off. in this case, the lid switch is not used for high current, it's simply used as a sensor, so there's no worry of shocks. but you should have the vbattery out and the power disconnected.

lid switch 50% chance fix

on my mother's laptop, the whole assembly consisted of a piece of plastic plunger (some of which fed up through a hole in the plastic case so the lid could push down on it) embedded into a metal spring which was attached to a removeable section of the case. this plunger had a lower half below the spring also which pushed down on the switch, which was kind of a plunger-lever switch that rotated about one horizontal axis, pushing a shorting piece of metal points down across 2 metal bars which were wired in somehow (I couldn't see, VERY tight fit).

I knew that this switch was easily breakable.

I took a risk and tried to remove the motherboard to get at the switch so I could remove the circuit board at the recommendation of someone who had taken laptops apart before. But in the process of removing the motherboard, flexing it, and putting it back in, I must of done something to ruin it, because now networking no longer works, and the display flickers (figures, I stressed it by lifting up the motherboard only slightly, but it was enough apparently - I hate taking apart laptops).

In our case, it would have been OK to lose the laptop anyway: we still have the data on the hard disk. But we didn't.

There was the display switch on top still in that little crevice. 50/50 chance of it either keeping the display permanently on or permanently off, due to the fact that these types of switches are momentary contact, so they can be either n.o. (normally open), or n.c. (normally closed).

with the power out and battery removed, I took the gamble and figured that the switch was probably n.c. and took a pair of pliers and broke the top half of the switch casing and removed the little piece of metal contact "contact leaf" or whatever you want to call it that was in the top portion of the switch.

turned the laptop on and with the exception of the wireless, the display worked.

I am not guaranteeing or waranteeing results.

your mileage will probably vary because every laptop is different - like I said, 50/50 chance of permanently black "off" display on your laptop. you could still take it to a service rep, but they might charge you more to fix it because you messed with it (maybe, maybe not, depends on their mood or policy).

What is my preferred official recommendation? take your laptop to a menufacturer-authorized service center near you and have them fix any laptop problems you have have. laptops are no fun to mess with (at least for me).

when you break the switch with the pliers, there may be metal pieces flying. this is why the laoptop must be totally unpowered. if the metal gets inside the laptop, you must retrieve it, because it you power up the laptop with that metal inside, it will damage the laptop.

NEW ADDITIONAL POSSIBLE FIX for other 50%

if the 50% chance fix does not work and the screen is off all the time now instead of being flaky, you can repair the switch by permanently shorting out the contacts by stuffing in aluminum foil across the contacts and jamming it into the switch. some switches you can do this with and some switches you can't do this with. If you know where the switch is routed to on the motherboard, you can solder the 2 pins together. you will have to glue this to keep the foil from coming out.

because the aluminum foil is tin+aluminum, and is a different metal than tin+gold which may be used on the contacts, this may cause oxidation (I forget my metallurgy), so you may or may not need to do this again. this fix should turn your screen on permanently if you do it right. if it becomes temporary, either the aliminum foil has come off the contacts, or it has oxidized and the contacts need to be burnished (if that's possible) and new foil put on and re-glued.

avoid getting the aluminum foil anywhere else inside the laptop. it will surely short the wrong thing out when you power it up.

-=-=-=-DISCLAIMER!!!-=-=-=-

I don't guarantee or warrantee any of this, and if you break your laptop, you did it yourself, and you have yourself to blame, I still recommend a service center, I hate taking apart laptops.

taking apart a laptop is not a walk in the park (may ruin your laptop permanently): I will tell you that in the process of taking apart this laptop (but not my first one) and putting it back together later on (and carefully), the laptop's networking functions no longer worked, and I even reseated the wireless card twice (no wired either, which is built into the mb, which is really mysterious)! you are on your own if you do this!

the laptop I was working on was a gamble, we did it because we didn't want to spend the money on a service center and we knew we didn't mind losing the laptop, we had the data on the hard disk, and we could always take that out and put it in an external drive case. but I got her permission before I started.

live in remote area with no service shops?

• mail the laptop to the closest manufacturer-authorized repair shop. you will have to look them up through the service department.
• try the lid switch fix if you can't do the above and you are REALLY DESPERATE.