When I shut my laptop, the screen goes off after a few seconds. Like its supposed to. However when I reopen the laptop, the screen never comes back.


I have the Display power saver enabled in KDE, if I wait till it times out then move the mouse the screen come back then. But I have to wait for it to time out. Its like it doesn't realize that the screen was turned off in the first place when I closed it. Anyone see this problem or have any clues on how to fix it? any ideas would be appreciated.


Dell Inspiron 8100
512M Ram
SuSE 9.0
KDE 3.1
Nvidia device driver with (Option "DPMS" set so the power saving works)

You might have allready tried this, but my Dell laptop (though a bit older than yours) had the same problem, which i can fix by pressing the FN key + the switch display button (switch between external and internal display) then it reinitializes the screen and it works again. This worked for me, let me know if it works for you too.

If the Inspiron is anything close to the same as the Latitude, then you actually have two modes of operation for when the clam closes. It sounds like your top is set to try and suspend on closure. I would suspect that this throws your machine into a flat spin. I have switched mine to simply turn the screen and some of the driver electronics off. It doesn't suspend or anything complicated, it just switches the lights off. When you open the clam again, it turns straight back on.

I would recommend having a sift through the BIOS menus and check to see if there is a setting for this in the Inspiron and if so what it is set to.

Good luck

That is interesting to hear. At work, I have the exact same problem on my Inspiron 8100, but I'm running windows 2000. I never really quite figured out how to fix that. Sometimes I would just open and close the lid a bunch of times and it would eventually work. Other times, nothing would make it work. I eventually had enough and just got a new Inspiron 8500.

It is interesting to see the post above about hitting the FN + switch screen buttons. I've never tried that. I'll have to give it a go when I get back to work.

Sorry I don't have an answer, but I just wanted to let you know that there are other people out there that feel your pain. Dell makes cheap shit.

I'd be willing to shell out a few more bucks for something MADE IN AMERICA that would actually last and not crap out after a few years. But how would Dell profit without a little built in obsolescence from China?

-Pontius Pilate

The screen on my Latitude C600 has a similar problem. It only turns on every other time that I open it. Every time that I open it, I just open it about an inch, then close it again, and then open it all the way.

I am not quite sure that I will go with DELL again...

Its not going into suspended mode, I've all ready turned that off, so that's not the problem.


I tried the Fn+LCD/CRT switch idea and it does work, however when it switches back it screws up the screen in KDE where the bottom is at the top and the top is at the bottom. Only restarting the X server and KDE fixes it. So close, but no cigar.

Hmm .. ok .. have you tried switching to text mode before closing the clam? This to determine what is going wrong, rather than as a permanent solution. It may be that X cannot withstand the screen powerdown process. Text mode is more resilient.

Andy M

I have a followup question on this issue.

I have a Dell 8000 Inspiron that I just installed SuSE 9.0 without an issue. I brought it to work and plugged it into the docking station with an external monitor, keyboard and mouse, but when it boots (Dual boot to W2K, SuSE) windows will wake up the external monitor but SuSE boots fine, hear it with the startup, but a blank screen (after the splash screen shows SuSe loading).

Now I undocked and opened the LCD to see it blank also. I hit FN+CRT/LCD and it came up showing it had booted fine and looking for the new hardware.

My problem is to figure out how to make the change while the lid is closed and cannot access the FN key.

Any thoughts???

I'm not sure that anyone really cares anymore since no one has posted a message to this thread in a while but this was really pissing me off too. I have WinXp installed (please don't write any hate mail) but was getting the same problem with a Dell C610 Laptop the monitor would shut off when I closed it and then wouldn't come back on when I opened it. I tried everythig that everyone said here and none of it worked for me. So I went back to the dell site and started looking around for possible solutions. I downloaded and installed the BIOS update and now it works fine I'm running bios release 16 which is the newest available right now. The path below brings you to the dell support site where you can pick your computer from a list and get updates for that computer only, then search for bios updates, they have versions that do everything for you no boot disk needed it's pretty nice:

http://support.dell.com/support/down...=19&l=en&s=dhs

peAce in the middle east save the brown people,
Shaun

Thanks, but I tried it and it still doesn't work. I'm running an Inspiron 8500. I am convinced that the backlight bulb just burnt out. These things have serious built in obsolecensce in them. Almost like clockwork at the 2 year mark, they are done. I'm never buying Dell again and I spread the word like wildfire to all my friends and co-workers that they *will* break. It's not a matter of if, but a matter of when.