# Dell Inspiron Screen flickers



## buckaroobanzai (Oct 7, 2008)

Greetings- 
My wifes Dell Inspiron 4150 (Win XP Home, 1.7Ghz, 256 Megs Ram) has a problem with the screen. It flickers, or dims & then comes back to full brightness. I have tried to isolate when it does this ( on too long, too much cpu usage, ect.), but it doesnt seem to matter. I have noticed it seems to stop or improve when I unplug the power. Also, on a different note, I get error messages saying I should switch to another power supply or lose data (as if its running on Battery only when in fact its plugged in). I was wondering if a complete HD wipe & OS re-install would help. Anyone got any ideas? I searched the forum for other instances of this problem & didnt see anything. If this has been covered before, forgive me. Thanks for your time.

Buckaroo Banzai


----------



## Severcool (Aug 24, 2007)

This sounds like a power issue. When a laptop receives constant power from an AC adapter the screen has full brightness. When you are on battery power, the laptop will usually go into a battery mode and dim the screen. If there is no constant power supply from the AC adapter, the laptop is probably bouncing back and forth between these modes and you might get screen flicker. Try a different AC adapter.


----------



## EnfoToad (Jun 22, 2007)

Severcool said:


> This sounds like a power issue. When a laptop receives constant power from an AC adapter the screen has full brightness. When you are on battery power, the laptop will usually go into a battery mode and dim the screen. If there is no constant power supply from the AC adapter, the laptop is probably bouncing back and forth between these modes and you might get screen flicker. Try a different AC adapter.


I agree. Most of the time when you have a big bulky adapter with a tiny wire on the end, the wire can get loose and you may start seeing the inside wire itself. When the wire moves from side to side the connection can go from on to off constantly, depending on how bad the rip in the wire is. You should definitely check for this. Please note that this can be a fire hazard. Make sure to replace your current AC adapter if you see such damage.


----------



## buckaroobanzai (Oct 7, 2008)

Ok, I have considered your advice and was about to buy a new power supply and decided on an experiment instead. I took my daughters Dell note book- a 300 MGZ pentium machine and hooked up the suspect powersupply to it. Ran it all day and NO SCREEN FLICKERING on her computer. Anybody got any new ideas?


----------



## Severcool (Aug 24, 2007)

That hardly seems relevant. But if you're convinced, OK.

It may be that the connector on the laptop is bad. You can take it to a BestBuy and ask them if you can try to connect your laptop to a good power adapter as a test.


----------

