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The screen on my Dell Latitude D505 running XP has gone almost black with the desktop barely visible. This happened suddenly upon startup the other day. I know this can't be good. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to revive it?

I tried the brightness control and it has no effect. I have the laptop running on AC power. A friend of mine had the same laptop so I swapped batteries but still had the same problem. It's difficult to navigate the desktop when you can barley see it but I can get into most things. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Pixpicker,
Welcome to The PCHF,

Unfortunately what you have described sounds like the backlight in the sreen has blown and the only way to fix this is to replace the screen. If your system is still under warranty, you can have it done through that. If not then I'm afraid that it is a pretty epensive repair job.
let us know how you get on

You might try doing a system restore, if there was a glitch that changed some settings it may help. I dont own a laptop, but dont some of them have a power saving function, or settings that you can brighten/dim the display to conserve battery power? Maybe someone thats familiar with that machine, or laptops in general can tell you for sure. Might be worth a look in control panel to see.