Update on Acer AL1711 Backlight flashing

I posted a few months ago about a flickering and flashing backlight on my Acer AL1711. When I’d turn it on, it would briefly flash on for about half a second, but then go dark. I fixed that problem by turning down the brightness to the minimum setting (without the help of the backlight, which is quite a task, see bottom of this post for detailed instructions).

However, the problem continued to the point where the monitor wouldn’t stay on even at minimum brightness. Here are two alternative solutions if you’re not ready to part with your monitor:

1) With your computer on, turn on the monitor. The backlight will flash off, but leave the monitor on, i.e. with the LED indicator green, for about 5-10m. This warms up the components. Then turn it off and turn it right back on, and the backlight should stay on.

2) Buy a new Power/Inverter board for your monitor. I found one on eBay for $9 including shipping. It took about 10 minutes to install, and now the monitor seems to work fine.

Please leave a comment if this helps you out!

Here is the sequence to reduce brightness if the backlight doesn’t work: hit “Menu” button once, wait 2 seconds, “Menu” button again to select “Brightness/Contrast”, “Right Arrow” to select “Brightness”, “Menu” to enable the Brightness selection, then hold “Left Arrow” for 5-10 seconds to lower brightness to 0, “Auto” x 3

Fixing flashing backlight for Acer AL1711 17" LCD Monitor

 

I was testing to see if changing the brightness on my LCD caused differences in the pitch emitted from the inverter when it adjusted luminosity. With my ear against the back of the monitor, and my finger pressing the increase brightness button, I listened for differences in loudness. Unbeknownst to me, when I reached 100% brightness, this overloaded the inverter and the backlight turned off.

After that, I thought the inverter had by coincidence come to its end, because when I would turn off, and restart the monitor, the backlight and screen would flash on for a quarter second and then immediately turn off.

Then I started troubleshooting. After a couple hours of trying to configure the monitor using the OSD on an unbacklit monitor (which is very hard, do it in daylight so that you can see the contents of the screen), I finally solved the problem. What I did was decrease the brightness to minimum on the OSD, and I exited the OSD. The backlight did not come back on when I decreased the brightness in the OSD. I had to save the settings, exit the OSD, and restart the monitor. Then, when it lit up, the reduced brightness was within the (aging) specs of the inverter, so it didn't flash off immediately.

Hope this helps someone. If so, please leave a comment. Enjoy!