IBM ThinkPad R40 (Notebook)

jescab

I have an IBM ThinkPad R40 (Notebook) and my little nephew was playing with it and now the display doesn/t lite up. If I hook up an external monitor (CRT) it displays fine but when I unhook the external monitor the notebook display doesn't lite up. I can barely, and I mean barely, see the words THINKPAD and then WINDOWS XP on the display. Everything else works fine.

I am assuming it is a setting.

Did anyone else run into this problem and know how to fix it?
Do you think the problem will go away if I re-format the hard drive?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks & Regards!!

Webmaster

I don't have experience with IBM notebooks, but my guess would be that it is a setting that can be configured using the keyboard and that reformatting won't do any good. Resetting it to factory defaults in the BIOS (if possible) might help.

mobri09

There might be a keyboard hotkey for brightness. On my dell i hold in the blue Fn secondary key down by the spacebar and F2 to control it. Other than that the LCD might have went bad. For Ibm i think its holding down the fn key and the home key maybe. The home key should have a sun on it or something.

slimNet

jescab wrote:

I have an IBM ThinkPad R40 (Notebook) and my little nephew was playing with it and now the display doesn/t lite up. If I hook up an external monitor (CRT) it displays fine but when I unhook the external monitor the notebook display doesn't lite up. I can barely, and I mean barely, see the words THINKPAD and then WINDOWS XP on the display. Everything else works fine.

I am assuming it is a setting.

Did anyone else run into this problem and know how to fix it?
Do you think the problem will go away if I re-format the hard drive?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks & Regards!!

Formatting the hard drv will not make it go away?

FN (lower left ) + HOME (top right) is the key combination to brighten the lcd .

If that does not work then the lcd display may have gone bad .. and you'll have to call IBM tech support to send the Thinkpad in to replace the lcd at no cost to u IF it is still under warranty otherwise to cost to replace the lcd is around around $600.00

jescab

I have tried the FN + Home key to try and brighten the display but that did not work.

I re-formated the hard drive and everything is ok again. The re-format DID work.

Thanks for all the help guys.

JB

mobri09

Thats wierd

Webmaster

Very weird considering you said "see the words THINKPAD", which would be shown even if there wouldn't be a hard disk in it right?

mobri09

I have been off lately on my anwsers....I am going to quit IT all together

RussS

Sounds to me like the backlight - or the power inverter .... or even more likely a combination of both.