Laptop Display Brightness Problem

[supton]

I tend to leave my laptop running, often it will just wake up on its own anyhow--need to do a full shutdown, not hibernate.

Today, been running a few days, and it decided to start changing screen brightness all on its own?

It's flickering too fast for the slider bar to keep up. And then it'll stop for a few seconds... and the bar gets correct... then more random display brightness changing. What might it be?

I wiped of what I could find for dust, cleaned whatever sensors I could find, shined a light at it, turned the light up in the room. I even went as far as shutting down and letting it cool off for an hour. No go. Immediately started doing this again.

Dell Latitude E6410, looks like an i7 M620 at 2.67GHz, Nvidia NVS 3100M for display adapter, has the max 8GB installed that it will support, Win10 on an SSD. But I'm guessing that's all fine (well it does seem a bit laggy right now) as the laptop screen is doing this--but the external plugged in monitor doesn't. The external monitor is fine (that's what I'm typing on).

I went and "killed" the laptop screen. Maybe it's on its way out? It is going between two levels though, like a day/night mode, but I don't think I have anything turned on for that. I don't know what would be causing that to flip randomly.

I don't think I have anything in NVIDIA turned on?

It's also suddenly glitching on audio. Random bits of static on youtube videos. Both internal speakers and on my audio amp. ? It's like when it has to think hard, things get dropped. Which makes sense... but it was running 100% fine yesterday.

I closed some tabs after catching this, but same static.

The right answer may very well be "deep six that ancient machine!" Which is a bummer but not surprising. I have an i5-6500 with 16GB on Mint that I've been messing with, as I know this laptop is pretty old.

I think I'll post this, then kill this machine and open it up. Maybe dust bunnies attacked it?

 

[2009Caraman]

Try running a live usb linux distro and see if it does it in that. if it does then probably the screen itself.

 

[Pew]

Is it plugged into the wall when this happens?

 

[spackard]

D/L the latest appropriate NVidia driver, then uninstall the existing, reboot, install latest, reboot again.

Problem is: graphics driver installation can go bad quickly, where you need Remote Desktop to get in and fix. Not that hard in a corporate environment but hard in a residential environment with inseparable hardware.

 

[supton]

Try running a live usb linux distro and see if it does it in that. if it does then probably the screen itself.

Not a bad idea, might try that.

Is it plugged into the wall when this happens?

Yes. Battery life is about 3minutes, maybe less now.

D/L the latest appropriate NVidia driver, then uninstall the existing, reboot, install latest, reboot again.

I can try that, thanks.

Sounds like I have a couple of things to work on, thanks all.

 

[Pew]

Yes. Battery life is about 3minutes, maybe less now.

If the issue continues after reinstalling the drivers, go into power options and tick the screen brightness to 100%, even if on low battery. I wonder if the laptop is freaking out and going between plugged in and "battery dead".

 

[supton]

So it wasn't flickering the screen in BIOS. But I noticed that the battery life was low and not on AC? which is odd, it's plugged in, and the battery is toast. I wonder if the battery is now so bad that it's dragging the system down--or the supply itself is on its way out.

Brought it up on Linux Mint. Still flickering sporadically.

Just dawned on me: unplugged the AC adapter and the screen drops in brightness. Now I remember: my laptops have always down that, cut power consumption. I wonder if this knockoff supply has had it.

Edit: I don't think it liked being booted into Mint, now it's sitting while attempting repairs. I think it took offense...

Edit2: forced it off, comes back on now. Dug around and found a spare AC adapter. It's happy again.

 

[dubber09]

It's a pretty old laptop (model) and if battery is still original then it's likely a toast.
Just uninstall all Dell stuff in Control Panel>Programs and Features except Dell Command Update. Display brightness issue is most likely with one of their 'optimizers'.

 

[supton]

So I gave the old supply the ole sniff test--and it failed. So I used my universal power supply opener to give a look-see.

Output Input buss cap is bulged and may be discolored. Am guessing it dried out and as it did so, ESR went up, which leads to yet more heating.

The backside is a bit scary...

The bad output buss cap is up towards the top. So it was wicking heat down.

But OMG, what is going on the lower end of the board? Yikes!

I mean, this thing has been plugged in more or less continuously for like the last 10 years...

Edit: got the sides mixed up, that cap is the filter off the 120V bridge rectifier. But one of the output caps is bulged too. Flat out aged out, this supply did--looking at the innards I'm surprised it made it this long.