Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

[tibimakai]

I'm having this issue and not sure what to do.
I have a cheap replacement adapter.
Laptop stays on on battery power, just the screen goes off.
I have the latest firmware installed.
Any ideas would be appreciated.

[LDSisHere]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

I do not know if I can help with your problem but I have attached the schematics for that laptop. I use one for my main computer, my son has one and I have another one for parts.

[tibimakai]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

I have noticed that only the backlight turns off.
I have connected it to an external monitor and it shows more then 4 hours of battery life.
If I try opening different windows, sometimes the screen turns on.
I had a different hard drive in it which reported that has an issue and I should replace it, so I did.
On the old hard drive I didn't have this issue.
Now I have different(used) hard drive with a fresh Win 7 installation and I have this issue..
Tried different drivers, without any change.

[valiant007]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

did you try adjusting the brightness? or check the power settings maybe its set to dim the display or turn off the display after not being used for a certain period of time.

[tibimakai]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

I can't adjust the brightness and I have tried adjusting the power settings. I left everything on never. I have even tried in the BIOS to set to different brightness settings.

[valiant007]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

Does the screen go of when you are on the bios? or does it do it only when windows is loaded?

[tibimakai]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

I will have to try that tomorrow. Usually when the Windows startup gui shows for a little bit, then the screen goes off.
I'm not sure if it's not Windows 7 the issue?

[valiant007]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

Try installing the latest drivers for your video card. it could be one of three things
1. the video card of video drivers
2. lcd cable
3. or maybe the lcd itself is damaged

[tibimakai]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

The thing is that with the power adapter it's working great.

[valiant007]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

thats strange, just try it on the bios anyway. and if possible if you know anybody who has a laptop with the same model you could try borrowing his battery. could be that your battery is not giving enough power.

[tibimakai]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

The CPUID HWmonitor shows a wear level of 35%, which I think it's pretty low.
If I hold the battery charge button for three second it shows 5 LEDs out of 6, which I believe that it's not good either, but how come that it worked with a previous Windows on another hard drive?
The laptop runs very well on batteries, using an exterior monitor. Did not test for how long though.

[tibimakai]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

BIOS it's working great. Hmm, it's a driver issue?

[tibimakai]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

I'm even confused about what kind of video graphics it has, in the BIOS shows 8MB and CPU-Z shows 256MB. I know that it must have the basic one, because it doesn't have a graphics card, that I have seen on Ebay, it just has a simple board plugged in there(switch board?!).

[valiant007]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

it could be the video driver or the battery. ive encountered problems with the battery after installing windows 7. the battery life suddenly becomes very short and i get a warning to replace the battery while on win xp and vista the battery works fine.

for the video drivers go to dell website and look for the drivers of Dell E1705/9400.

[LDSisHere]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

This model can have three different video outputs. A Geforce go7900 (256MB), an ATI x1400 (128 MB) or the integrated Intel. Mine has the 7900 and my sons has the x1400 and neither of us has had any problems running Win7, not to say that it cannot happen. If you have a cooling system on the right hand side then you have a one of the two video cards, if no cooling system on the right then it is the integrated Intel. Both of my machines run fine with the drivers downloaded from Microsoft. I would double check or reset the power savings settings in Windows in addition to changing the driver or just do a fresh install to see if that fixed the problem. You may want to see what it does with only the default Windows VGA driver, just for testing purposes and comparison.

[tibimakai]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

I agree with the Windows 7 and battery problems. I have another Acer laptop which shows a red X on the battery since I have installed Win 7 on it.
I may try Win 8 and see.
I don't have that extra fan in there.
I have a different question about this Acer laptop, it seems that it has a tab bonding issue at the panel itself. This is a common issue with laptops screens also? I'm at the TV/monitor area of this forum and I have just stared working on laptops. If a bend the LCD PCB, the picture comes back, that to me it seems like a tab issue.

[tibimakai]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

It's a Windows 7 issue. If I disable in the Device Manager at the Battery the second option (Battery management), the screen comes on.
I have installed Vista and I don't have any issues anymore.
It seems that some of these older laptops don't chew well the Windows 7 environment.

[jsmoke]

Re: Dell E1705/9400 screen won't stay on on battery power

I have seen this a few times and is was the inverter board that was the cause, however it would do this on all os installed not just windows 7