Home
This guide will help you replace the screen inverter in a Dell Latitude D800 laptop. As in most other models, the inverter board is mounted inside the display panel and located below the LCD screen.
You will find the display panel diagram in the service manual for Dell Latitude D800.
Screen inverter failure symptoms:
1. The laptop starts normally and video works fine for a while but after some time the screen goes very dark. You still can see the desktop but it’s very faint.
2. When you turn on the laptop, the screen lights up for a moment and goes off.
3. You can light up the screen for a short period of time by pressing on the lid close switch.
You can search for a new screen inverter for Dell Latitude D800 laptops here.
By the way, when the inverter board fails, you still can use the laptop with an external monitor connected to the VGA port.
1. Turn off the laptop.
2. Connect an external monitor.
3. Start the laptop, it should detect the external monitor automatically. If the external monitor is not detected, try switching video from internal to external mode using Fn+F8 key combination.
May 28th, 2009 at 4:45 am
I have an issue and I don’t know why it does not work. I have a Latitude D630 and had to replace my broken screen against a new one. Same model, everything the same. Installed the screen, but when I boot up my laptop, the screen stays dark. When booting, I can see the screen reacting to it, nothing comes up. The laptop works fine when connecting to an external screen, but not with the new replacement screen. Is there some kind of a key combo I need to use to get it to work? I have no idea. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks, Steve…
May 20th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I have a Dell Latitude D800 that now has a dim display from start-up to desktop (readable but certainly not bright enough to use without getting a headache). I have done the following:
1. Tried to adjust the brightness with the fn + arrow up/down keys – no change (same dim level up or down)
2. Hooked it up to an external monitor – the external monitor displays perfectly
3. Downloaded the latest Quickset application from dell to see if it would help the fn + arrow up/down keys – no change (same dim level up or down)
4. Adjusted the brightness in the BIOS to max for battery and with power – no change
5. Did a diagnostic test on boot up and got the error message LCD Inverter Detection Test – Fail Error Code: 1000-0322
6. Swapped the the entire LCD display with a known working one – no change – (doesn’t that rule out the inverter and the backlight?)
7. Downloaded the latest video drivers – no change
Any additional ideas for troubleshooting would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
May 9th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Well Status update, the new cable came today, put it in and same effect. So I guess I’m looking at a bad inverter board or a bad LCD altogether. I removed the wireless card and the modem just to make sure it wasn’t causing some interference with the LCD, but no dice. Back to the drawing board on this one.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:24 am
Yep, I tried multiple times. The connectors look decent. I attempted to measure the resistance across the conenctors and found maximum of 2.6 ohms, 0.8 ohms on most pins. Unfortunately, since it is an XGA connector, not all pins are in use and therefore I cannot tell if a particular wire is totally severed or not. I’ve ordered a new cable from an ebay seller, should be here in a couple of days for a whopping 7 bucks. Hoping that is all it is. Thanks.
May 5th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Al,
It’s hard to tell if your problem is related to the cable or LCD.
Did you try reconnecting the video cable on the motherboard? Maybe it’s just loose connections.
May 4th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
I have a Dell Latitude D610, Internal video top half works fine, bottom half is garbled (can see shadow image of Dell Insignia during POST). Moving screen back and forth sometimes clears it up, to this point it has become pretty bad. External video works fine, no distortion. Thought here is bad LCD cable, but in disassembling it and wiggling it around, cannot figure out where the break is (to confirm the cable is bad and replace Cable is KC404) Your thoughts?
March 16th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
I also have screen issues with my Dell Inspiron. split second red picture at startup and then faint image. I have changed the inverter twice, with the first one working for about an hour and then the screen going dark again. Thinking that the new inverter went bad, I got another one and it didn’t work at all. (I’m NOT assuming a bad inverter here) I’m wondering if I have incompatible inverters, they were sold on ebay for my model laptop and screen size, but I didn’t have an original part number to compare. I’m leary of trying to replace the backlight myself. Any suggestions?
March 9th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
I’m nearly certain, based on this and other web sources, that the problem with my inspiron 8200 is the inverter. I’ve found a number of places that sell them online, however the 8200 was made with lcds from a variety of manufacturers and it’s been extremely difficult determining the specific manufacturer of my particular lcd (UltraSharp XGA 1600×1200 15 inch)
Is the manufacturer’s info easy to find if I were to open the lcd myself? Do you have any tips for finding this information?
Thank you for your help.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:24 am
Thanks, your idea worked. I entered bios (F2),set video brightness for battery to max and AC brightness to 50%. This worked but screen a little to dimm, so upped the brightness in bios again to 65% anything above this did not work.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Charlie,
I really don’t know what is causing this problem. A few people posted exactly the same problem about their Dell laptops but no one posted a solution.
Make sure the LCD screen brightness is set to 100% when the laptop runs from the battery. If it still works fine from the battery, I think your problem is not related to the inverter board. Apparently, there is a problem with the motherboard and connecting the AC adapter makes it fail somehow.
Enter the BIOS setup menu and find out if you can control the screen brightness from there. Play with the settings. Try reducing the screen brightness 50% for the AC mode. Does it make any difference? Does the screen still fails when you plug in the adapter?