Once in a while, techies need love too....

[emt-hawk.livejournal.com]

I have a Dell D620 laptop, that I bought, used. Last night, I was settling in for a short round of Hellgate: London, and my monitor suddenly went dark. I could see the desktop in there, but it was like the backlight was gone. It's a used laptop, and I thought for certain that I was screwed out of the price of a new internal LCD monitor.

Today, I borrowed a monitor from work, and attached it to my computer, and it worked fine. That tells me that the LCD panel seems to have gone bad. Just to be complete, I had already reseated the LCD connector of the original monitor to the motherboard, and that didn't fix it.

The good news is that it's still under warranty, and I'm working with the guy who sold it to me to get the machine in my name, so far as Dell is concerned, so I can exercise the warranty.

The better news is that I got online with IM tech support from Dell. No bullshit, no fooling around with "we need to send a tech out" to do the warranty replacement.

The best news is that they're shipping me a new LCD panel for me to put in!

--Hawk

Comments

[evilbutcute.livejournal.com]

Even if it is not under your name, Dell should still be able to come and fix it for you if it is still under warranty. They're pretty cool like that.

Unless the Dell rep told you otherwise. Did they?

[emt-hawk.livejournal.com]

Nope, they didn't. I don't mind fixing the LCD, I've done it on D600's in the past, and I'm never home when they have "office hours." I figured it would be easier on me if I asked them for the parts, and did it myself. I have a friend who's a Dell-certified tech, and I'm part way through the program now.

--H

[evilbutcute.livejournal.com]

It's a good program. I love being able to say "just send me parts" instead of waiting for a tech. it's like waiting for a plumber and I've got better things to do (no offense to plumbers out there reading techsupport lj)

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

Actually, if the backlight is out, then getting a new LCD probably won't solve the problem. Sounds more like you need a new backlight inverter board, which is usually independent of the LCD.



Oh wait, sorry; that was actually helpful. My bad. *sets self on fire*

[jecook]

LOL.

Knowing Dell, they'll probably send out an entire list assembly. But I could be wrong.

[emt-hawk.livejournal.com]

OK, then... why should replacing the monitor with another one resolve the problem?

--Hawk
(not trying to be snarky, i'm new at laptop hardware repairs. I've been doing luser support since '91, but new at laptop hardware. I happen to hate taking apart a laptop monitor... --H)

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

The inverter board drives the cold-cathode fluorescent tube built into the bottom edge of the LCD screen panel. Plugging an external monitor into the laptop works fine, as the external monitor (assuming it's a flatscreen) has it's own inverter board. (If it's a cathode-ray, no backlight needed.)

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

From fiddling around with broken Latitude screens, I have two things to say:

i. It's one assembly, LCD, backlight, etc.
ii. I would really rather wait for them to send a tech to do it: it's one of those fiddly bloody jobs that takes forever and if someone else can do it, so much the better. I hate working on the LCD almost as much as having to get to a laptop's motherboard.

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. the tube is part of the LCD panel, but in all the laptops i've disassembled, the inverter board is actually a separate piece, installed somewhere underneath the screen bezel.

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

They'll send a kit with a new display, inverter and cable. Its a no brainer fix. RTFM first, tho. =)

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

Ah, see; i always end up getting my parts off ebay. Purchased that way, the LCD usually doesn't include the inverter.

[tophee.livejournal.com]

Lawl. exactly what I was going to say.. Inverter.

/toph

[arinoch.livejournal.com]

You probably got someone from North America... it's a business level unit, so it probably comes with the equivalent warranty. It used to be exactly the same for Dell's XPS line. Then they closed our office up here and fired it all at India. Thanks, Dell.

[jecook]

Quite likely.

We use D630's at work, but then, we also do the Warranty parts direct program in house too. We rarely have to put up with a tech coming by unless I want to be lazy.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

This just says that you should play in person RPGs.

I was looking at Eclipse Phase (http://www.eclipsephase.com/), which seems hawt.

[vxo.livejournal.com]

Haha, be glad this isn't on an Apple... on those, you kinda have to take the entire bottom of the system open before being able to access anything in the lid.

Man... I dislike Dell for many reasons, but that support arrangement kicks ass.

[greatblondino.livejournal.com]

This is a bit of an aside, but on the subject of techs calling techs:

Whenever I call tech support lines, I try to give the techs proper respec' and let them do their job. It's really hard when you end up calling somewhere in India, mind you. Or the script-readers that just tell you to power-cycle stuff and then pass you to another queue.

With Apple, what usually happens is that they'll go through their 'we need your billing information in case it's not a hardware fault, so we can charge you', and I'll patiently explain that I've eliminated software and yes, it is a goshdarned hardware fault.

There's an Internet provider in the UK that I used for my last job - we switched all of our dozen-or-so *DSL lines from BT to them. We cut the cost and increased reliability massively, but the best bit was that whenever I had to call their tech support, we had a mutual understanding that we both know what we're talking about and to let the other do their business. I'd often end up chatting to the techs while they happily explained everything they were doing. I learnt loads about telecoms that way...

Techs with that *nod of mutual understanding* thing get love from me.