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M9700 Monitor turning off

post #1 of 7
11/15/08 at 8:23pm
Thread Starter 
I am having problems with my monitor turning off on my M9700. I have had the notebook for about 2 years and this is the first time this has happened. I checked the power saving options to see if it was that and it wasn't. I set the monitor to never turn off and the hard disks. I leave it plugged in to an outlet and if I leave it for about a minute and it will go black. I can't turn the monitor back on either, and sometimes it won't even turn on if I power it off and then turn it back on. Do you guys have any ideas what the problem might be or how I can troubleshoot it?
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post #2 of 7
11/16/08 at 9:36am
If you're under warranty, call Alienware.

Could be the backlight, or the inverter panel. If you shine a light on the screen after it's gone out, can you still see an image?

You can also try hooking it up to an external monitor, and see if it goes dark on that also. If not, it's either the backlight or more likely the inverter panel.

Not sure where you can get one other than Alienware. You can check eBay or google for alienware parts.
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post #3 of 7
11/16/08 at 5:46pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks, I'll try another monitor.
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post #4 of 7
11/18/08 at 9:46pm
Thread Starter 
I hooked up another monitor to the notebook and it does the same thing. So that rules out the inverter and backlight right? do you think that it is the video card?
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post #5 of 7
11/19/08 at 12:01am
When the screen goes dark, can you still see an image when you shine a light on the screen?

It's likely that if the external also shuts off, that it's something other than the inverter. Usually if the vid card is going bad, you'll get artifacts on the screen before it shuts down.

It sounds like something is overheating, and shutting itself off to avoid damage. Likely either the cpu or the video card.

Have you ever cleaned out the fans/radiators, or replaced the thermal grease between the cpu/gpu and heatsinks?
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post #6 of 7
11/19/08 at 1:51am
Thread Starter 
I didn't shine a light on it yet, i'll do that though. I haven't seen the monitor shut off. It only does it when it sits for a few minutes, so i'll check to see if there are any artifacts before it goes out. I haven't cleaned out the fans, i'll do that also. Do you have a writeup on greasing the cpu/gpu and heatsinks?
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post #7 of 7
11/19/08 at 7:11am
Here's a great tutorial with pictures for applying Arctic Silver 5 thermal grease to the m9700 gpu and cpu.

I'd personally try the cpu first. It's easiest, and with my experience the cpu is more likely to overheat than the vid cards. The cpu involves a single heatsink with four screws.

http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=165929

The gpu's are more involved, and you need to be careful off the foam pads over the memory as you'll need to reuse them unless you can find new ones. They're not hard to save though.

Good luck, and let us know how it works out. You can get Arctic Silver 5 from newegg.com.
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