The display on my DELL Inspiron 1545 went blank. The screen was still backlit but apart from that it was black........ I plugged in an external monitor and the display on the external monitorwas fine..... then the laptop screen kicked back into life!!.... Removed the external monitor....... Laptop screen is OK, for now. It almost seems like some kind of video driver problem...... Does anyone have any ideas at all please? The O/S is Vista...... Thanks

SOURCE: what kind of mother board...

Dell used proprietary motherboards for this model so unless you are comfortable doing major modifications you would need to contact them to see if they have upgrade motherboards for your computer. Sorry. Hope this helps.

SOURCE: Black screen- laptop only works with external monitor

The fault could be a faulty CCFL lamp or inverter.
To determine if you have a LCD screen, inverter or video card problem, read this and follow these instructions.
Defective CCFL backlight, it may have the following symptom: Screen flashs on red/pink and off. Picture stays on in red and slowly be come normal. Picture flickering with dim display or appear black. Picture flickering on and off. All these symptoms indicate that the LCD backlight lamp (CCFL Lamp) has reached the end of the life and all you need to do is replacing the CCFL lamp.
Connect an external monitor to your laptop and power the monitor up first then the laptop, if you see the normal Windows images then the video card and laptop is OK and the problem is definitely the backlight. Dim image and/or dark display on the laptop's LCD screen indicates a faulty LCD backlight and it could be the inverter that supplies high voltage to the CCFL lamp or it is the CCLF lamp is nearly burnt out or burnt out, most likely this is the case.
The inverter can be replaced easily but the CCLF lamp is more time consuming and requires soldering skills.
Check out
www.lcdparts.net
for parts, repair service and DIY info.

If your Dell has a S-video output it could connect to a TV or a video device, which allows for a TV option.

SOURCE: kindly tell me about the regular maintenance

The maintenance on a computer should be done once a month.
Disk Cleanup should be done first - Click My Computer - then right click on the C drive then click Properties, then click Disk Cleanup - let it examine the C drive then it will calculate the amount of disk space it will recover, tick all the boxes and then Click OK and Yes to perform these actions. If you have a D drive then repeat these steps on this drive too.
Next the C drive needs to be Defrag. This process converts fragmented files into continuous files and this speeds up disk access and makes the hard disk does not work as hard. Click on Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Disk Defragmenter - click/highlight the C drive and click Analyze - then click Defragment.
When this is completed repeat these steps for the D Drive if you have a D drive.
Disk Cleanup and Defrag can take a long time to complete, especially if these tasks have not been for a long time.

SOURCE: dell inspiron 1545 went black after i gave it wrong passwords

this definitely a security thing so don't hurt your head you need to send it by a service center to get it restored.

SOURCE: dell latitude D610. Screen goes black. External Monitor OK.

Make sure you have not accidentally used the FN+F5 key
That combination sets the laptop to use an external display.

If using that does not give you a display take a small torch (flashlight if in USA) and shine it at an angle on the laptop screen.
If you can see any sort of picture you would be looking at replacement of some minor parts to the laptop screen

Hope this gives you the information you need. If not add any extra information you may have and lets see if we can FixYa

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