First blow out fan vents and then use the chop sticks to raise your laptop and create a 1/4 inch gap under your machine for air circulation.

Heat is the enemy of laptops, be sure your fan is working. How far along your laptop damage is, cannot be judged. The screen seems like it is about to lose it's backlight (can be replaced ).

You can replace it with a new Toshiba NB505 notebook, if it's just for surfing for $245.

When I get rich I would love to use one just for surfing.

My old laptop has an inverter problem. This is the second time in three months it has gone out. The symptoms started slightly differently than before, but it all ended the same: complete blackout.

I've got a few Inspirons here (a couple of 6400s and a 1300 - good workhorses, I've found, and spares are easy to get hold of).

The bottom of the screen does run pretty warm anyway, in my experience.

A new inverter wouldn't be expensive (you could try eBay - maybe $10-20 tops, possibly less if you're lucky), and isn't all that hard to fit, so it's worth trying before you write the laptop off.

I would try to avoid running it at all till you try that - if your LCD's recovering when it cools down, then you may not need to replace that as it stands, but more exposure to heat could ruin it once and for all.

If you've replaced other parts, you'll probably know your way around the Dell site and its guides to dismantling etc. (I've done various jobs on ours, mainly resulting from mishap - new screens, new inverter, new CPU fan etc.).

In fact, to do most work on them, you usually have to take the screen off anyway, so you've probably already been halfway there with previous jobs.

The only other thing in that area of the screen I can think of that could overheat as you describe is the backlight itself, though I've never heard of that happening. They can be replaced too, but it's not at all easy to source or fit them (you basically have to break the LCD apart), so in that case you'd probably be better looking at a whole new LCD assembly if it was economical.

It could be that once you get inside the lid, you'll get a better idea of what's amiss - look for discoloration/maybe even shorts from dust or debris.

You could also try the Dell forums rather than trusting my distant opinion. There aren't many problems with these machines that nobody else has experienced before, and if you can come up with some sensible search terms, the answer may be waiting for you.

Hope that helps.

Because the screen completely blacked out on me last night. So I'm now chained to the desktop computer.

Yes, it has to be the inverter. I took it in for a diagnostic and repair three months ago and paid $225.00 for the inverter and diagnostic.

I'll try ebay after I figure out if I can make the switch myself. When my keyboard keys began to fail I spent fifteen dollars on the little pieces and found out I didn't have the agility to put in those tiny plastic parts under the keys, so I spent another twenty on a new keyboard. Obviously, I would have gone the keyboard route first had I known how easy it was to replace, and how cheap it cost.

I've no idea what that diagnostic etc. involved (like I said, the inverter's cost's pretty trivial), but I guess that's money under the bridge now.

If you're saying you already had the inverter replaced just three months ago, that's a little worrying and might make me wonder why it's failed so soon (assuming that's what the problem ends up being). It could be bad luck, whoever did the job may have fitted a used one that didn't have much life left in it, or something else might be going wrong to cause it to fail. The last is obviously the most worrying possibility.

The inverter replacement isn't the worst job I've had to do on the laptops (replacing a noisy CPU fan on the 1300 would rank as that - you basically have to dissassemble the whole machine to get at it, which is a bit nervewracking!).

In this case, it's a question of following the instructions in the Dell guides available online (to the letter, I'd recommend), removing the whole lid from the laptop, splitting the lid, then the inverter's just a little circuit board sitting there secured by a couple of small screws and linked to the screen by a couple of cable connectors. In theory, it's a 15-30-minute job max. Getting the lid back together tidily is probably the trickiest bit.

If it's any consolation or reassurance, I gave up when I accidentally dislodged one of my keyboard caps - I can do most things with the laptops myself, but it was beyond me to fix. Luckily, I had a spare keyboard from a junk non-working 6400 I picked up cheap on eBay - if the motherboards go kaput (they don't like liquid spills ...), folks often sell them for spares or repair.

This is crazy. I could have used another full year with this little guy. Money is tight right now.

Thanks for the info.

Anything else I can do to help, just holler.

if it was only 3 months ago? Or maybe some sort of good will repair if they don't have an official policy? Shops generally care about their reputation at least a little... can't hurt to ask.

Sort of. I have to pay $50.00, which is still better than their minimum fee and the amount I paid when I first took the laptop to them.

I just need it to run until Christmas. And then it has to be retired.

There are some really powerful machines out there that are quite reasonably priced. We've gotten to a point where it is often cheaper to buy a new one than to fix/upgrade an older one.