Screen Fade Out

[nick2808]

Hi,

I have a Compaq Presario R3125 Laptop, its about 3 years old and it runs on Windows XP.

Just recently the screen has started to fade out approximately 5 minutes after starting up (before this it seems to work fine). It doesn't quite fully fade out - as you can just make out what is on the screen. There doesn't seem to be anything in particular that triggers it.

My computer had been running slowly for a while beforehand, sometimes freezing altogether - but this wasn't that regular, and it wasn't that slow either - i had put it down to having a lot of applications open, or not turning the laptop off for a while. Nevertheless, I had recently deleted a number of files (films, music and games) and defragmented the hard disk drive (this is the first time I have de-fragged the hard drive since it was new). Could this somehow have triggered something?

The only other thing to note, is that i recently bought a new iGo power cord, as my other one had stopped working. This works for the laptop - however i do notice that the battery seems quite hot (I don't know if it is hotter than usual) - and maybe this is causing overheating...?

Thanks for any help,

[unlovedwarrior]

is your fan spining on the back of the laptop??

what protections do you have?

[nick2808]

I haven't noticed if the fan is spinning or not to be honest.

I have started it up (without the power cord) and it seems to be ok at the moment - its been running for about 15 minutes. The fan is not spinning right now, however, this is the first time i've started it up for over a week - so the system maybe cool right now...?

I will try again soon with the power cord and see if the fan starts spinning or not.

I run ZoneAlarm, and regualary run LavaSoft Ad-Aware SE Personal.

[nick2808]

Ok, think i've worked it out... after plugging in the power cord it sure enough faded out. So i thought i'd check the power cord itself... it turns out that there were a number of 'connector tips' that would fit my laptop that all look exactly the same. It just turns out they are not.

So with a tiny bit of research i found a sheet that tells me exactly which tip to use...

Goes to show, reading the instructions generally is a good idea...