Hello Black Screen I've Come to Hate...

I have Vista on a Toshiba Satellite A135. My laptop is two years old now. When I turn it on, there is a red tinge to the screen. I've become adept at telling how long it will be before the screen turns black by how long it takes the red tinge to go away (the longer it takes, the longer I have). The computer will boot up normally and allow me to work on it for a while, but then the screen goes black, but doesn't shut down, and if I tilt the screen a little I can see my background and icons or watever I was working on, but can't do anything. The problem gets worse if I do a forced shut down, not even finishing booting up sometimes. But if I just press the power button (which I have set to shut down the computer when I press it) and shut it down normally, it works better, sometimes. I work with it mainly on my knees so that there is airflow under it. I don't know what to do. It's really starting to frustrate me. Does this sound like a problem with the computer itself or Vista? Any suggestions?

 

Probably the backlight

http://www.laptoptips.ca/hardware/lcd-failures/?apage=6

 

Hi ellieandlogan,
Even though we cannot rule out a possible black light issue, I would like you to try something before going that route...My daughter gave me her Toshiba laptop to fix for the second time in a month because of the black screen issue...To make a long story short, nothing worked and and I was out of options till I made a Google inquiry...I was amazed at what I came across, tried it and it works great now...

Turn the laptop off...Pull out the battery...Press and hold down the power button for 60 seconds and release it...Put the battery back in...Power up the laptop and hopefully it will boot back up...Supposedly, the Toshiba's store allot of power and it affects just the screen...By holding down the power button it releases that excess power...These instructions also came with the suggestion of replacing the battery but until I have a better understanding of what the power and battery connection is for this particular problem, I'm going to hold off on that suggestion...Good luck, hope it works.

 

Hi ellieandlogan,
I just wanted to add to my previous post why I opted not to go for replacing the black light this time:

Not too long ago I was given the opportunity to work on a laptop (cannot recall what it was) that had a very similiar screen issue as yours...I connected it to my desktop monitor and the desktop displayed what I could faintly see on the laptop screen...Again to make a long story short, that time it turned out to be the black light...It was replaced and all was well afterwards...

This time, being a Toshiba laptop as I had mentioned, the method of connecting it to the desktop monitor did not work as nothing would display...So I was not sure if I was dealing with a black light problem or not. Everything on the laptop would power up but nothing seemed to be giving me that quick fix worked as far as trying to get past the black screen...All is well now until I have a better understanding of why the battery needs to be replaced because when it's running off the house current I thought that usually bypasses the usage of the battery but maybe with the Toshiba models that's not the case ???

 

Seems a good option. To elaborate further some CMOS cells tend to retain their charge a bit longer. I suggest you wait for 10 minutes before loading up the battery again to ensure that the charge is completely drained !!