Hi,

I have a Compaq Presario R3125 Laptop, its about 3 years old and it runs on Windows XP.

Just recently the screen has started to fade out approximately 5 minutes after starting up (before this it seems to WORK fine). It doesn't quite fully fade out - as you can just make out what is on the screen. There doesn't seem to be anything in particular that triggers it.

My computer had been running slowly for a while beforehand, sometimes freezing altogether - but this wasn't that regular, and it wasn't that slow either - i had put it down to having a lot of APPLICATIONS open, or not turning the laptop off for a while. Nevertheless, I had recently deleted a number of files (films, music and games) and defragmented the hard disk drive (this is the first time I have de-fragged the hard drive since it was new). Could this somehow have TRIGGERED something?

The only other thing to note, is that i recently BOUGHT a new iGo power cord, as my other one had stopped working. This works for the laptop - however i do notice that the battery seems quite hot (I don't know if it is hotter than usual) - and maybe this is causing overheating...?

Thanks for any help,
is your fan spining on the back of the laptop??

what protections do you have?I haven't noticed if the fan is spinning or not to be honest.

I have started it up (without the power cord) and it seems to be ok at the moment - its been running for about 15 minutes. The fan is not spinning right now, however, this is the first time i've started it up for over a week - so the system maybe cool right now...?

I will try again soon with the power cord and see if the fan starts spinning or not.

I run ZoneAlarm, and regualary run LavaSoft Ad-Aware SE Personal.Ok, think i've worked it out... after plugging in the power cord it sure enough faded out. So i thought i'd check the power cord itself... it turns out that there were a number of 'connector tips' that WOULD fit my laptop that all look exactly the same. It just turns out they are not.

So with a tiny bit of research i found a sheet that tells me exactly which tip to use...

Goes to show, reading the instructions generally is a good idea...