Help - Netbook screen flashing! Anyone know why ...

[Plonker]

...or what I can do to stop it?

I've got a little (10.1) Samsung netbook that's nearly 2yrs old. I haven't had a scrap of bother with it but now the screen is flashing, really quite badly.

I haven't got a repair shop nearby so thought I'd ask here before I take it to PC World to get royally ripped off a bit of advice?

Can anyone help? Any ideas what could be wrong?

I'm not an expert at all, but...

When you say it flashes do you just mean the brightness changes or that it goes completely black during the flashes? If it's just the brightness it might be that the power cable or the socket for it is dodgy, and the laptop goes darker when it thinks it's just been unplugged.

If it's going totally black, I had a similar problem more than once with an older laptop.

If I remember correctly, one of the times it was due to a fault in the cable which supplied power to the screen. Another time I think it was either due to a backlight or LCD problem....

One of the times (can't remember which) it worked better (temporarily) when I held the sides of the screen for a couple of seconds, or changed the angle the screen was at.

Short answer based on my experience of a similar problem is that it's a hardware problem that you're unlikely to manage sorting on your own unless you're comfortable taking a screwdriver to your netbook.

I'm also not an expert on consumer rights, but I think in theory you can still badger the shop you bought it from into fixing it for you, outwith warranty up to 5-6 years.

Thanks for your reply

It doesn't happen when the power supply is in, or should I say, not necessarily when the power supply is in.

I'm not sure if it goes completely black tbh it's hard to tell ...it's almost like a blink, if that makes sense?

Err, definitely no to taking a screwdriver to it! ...though it's good to know that I can badger the shop to take a look. Thanks

Sorry, the cable/wire I was talking about is inside the laptop to connect the screen to the rest of the laptop, not the actual power cable that you plug in.

I'm sure the shop technically should arrange to sort it out for you, but I expect they'll be very very resistant to doing that...