Is my laptop turning on with a plugged-in battery, and flashing?
Is my laptop turning on with a plugged-in battery, and flashing?
I own a five-year-old Dell Inspiron 7370 running Windows 11. The graphics card driver has been updated. I think this isn't a Windows problem; it started happening a year ago, sometimes stopping itself after a few minutes, but now it happens all the time. When I plug in the battery—whether or not the laptop is plugged into AC power—the screen flashes so much that the computer stops working completely. This flashing happens even when I restart the laptop (the Dell logo shows up before Windows starts). Once inside Windows, if I change the brightness, the flashing goes randomly from dark to light but isn't related to the setting. I changed the battery and nothing fixed it. The old one was just a year old. The strangest thing is this: If I take the battery out (even without taking it off the laptop) and use AC power only, the screen stays solid and usable as long as brightness is between 0 and 99, but it stops working if set between 29 and 40 while the internal battery is unplugged. However, when I plug the battery back in, the problem comes back both with AC power and without it. Do you have any ideas or fixes? Thanks a lot.
I'm going off a bit for a second, though I think the screen might be too weak because it needs lots of power to work well. And since the battery is pushing more voltage through it, maybe you should just use another separate screen instead? Or are you planning to plug that into something else?
I fixed a lot of laptop screen problems like this one and every time it was just an internal monitor cable that got loose, kinked, or bent. Also right next to the hinges is a killer part for the monitor cable. IDK maybe your monitor cables are pulling when the battery pushes on them. Hope this helps!
@stonecarver @NanoSuit3 Thanks for the replies. I finally got a new full LCD assembly for $140. That price seems pretty good to me. From everything I've seen, my guess was that there was a broken inverter. Even so, swapping out the screen was super easy and the laptop is running fine again. Thanks again!