[Bassetlug mailing] Screen glitch

[MJ.Wells]

You may have noticed that I couldn't get anything up on the laptop
(satellite 4010cdt) screen tonight. Well actually if I was particularly
heavy on the keyboard I saw a brief glimpse of what should have been there.

The external and internal screens had seemed to cycle properly using the
fn+5 keys, with the internal screen showing a uniform sandy brown for two of
the three presses in the cycle and the external screen showing for one of
them and the third black  internal screen.

I had been meaning to get round to finding out how to open it to see if I
could upgrade the memory. Research on the net had suggested the memory
module was accessed by 'getting under the keyboard', but I hadn't found more
explicit instructions. Any of you who have opened a laptop will know how
difficult it is the first time when you have to investigate to find all the
screws and clips. Often after taking out 15 screws and with the expectation
that the case should just fall apart you find, after tentative unclipping of
many plastic catches, that one corner just will not do so. Half hour of
gently prising and careful study later you realise that there is one more
screw hidden under the battery, or the hard drive, or some other device that
you didn't remove.

So I 'bit the bullet' to take the thing apart when I got home to see if
there was a loose cable causing the problem.

After removing surprisingly few screws (compared to my HP nx9005 and its
brothers) it nearly fell apart. I soon discovered the two screws under the
battery and the thin strip above the keyboard jumped out into my hands - I
hadn't realised it was there. That will make upgrading the memory an easy
task if I can find any.

At that point the keyboard fell forward and a little black screw was seen to
be lying on the motherboard in a position where it seemed to be touching
some exposed tracking. Maybe that had shorted something - hopefully only to
prevent it working, not to have done permanent damage.

After putting it all together again - and surprisingly only finding one
extra screw remained on the workbench- which was all right as it was black
(the small offender from the insides) and the others silver (which implies
that the extra screw does not belong to this device at all) - and applying
the power with bated breath; all was well. The screen returned to life.

It seems that one of the computer's previous owners had not only downgraded
the disk drive (see other post), but thoughtfully left an extra screw inside
to make life interesting - 'Russian Roulette' with the internal electronics
every time the laptop is moved. Needless to say I will not be replacing THAT
screw - I am happy to do without that sort of 'interesting' in my life.

Martin