My friend Mitch just bought a new Dell Inspiron laptop and he encountered a small problem. The screen turned off after about a minute and a half every time he left it unattended. He asked me for help. I thought, that’s an easy fix, it must have something to do with the power settings. I went into Windows 7 Power Options and adjusted all settings so the screen never turns off. To my surprise, the laptop screen still did the same thing after a few minutes. It just went blank.

What I didn’t know then, and only found about later, is that Dell has an additional setting called Power Smart Energy Saving. It was set to dim the screen 90 seconds after you stop using the laptop. This is where you can find this setting:

In Windows 7:

• Go to Control Panel
• Click on Hardware and Sound
• Click on Power Options
• Click on Power Smart Energy Saving
• You’ll see that the Enable Power Smart option is selected. This makes the laptop screen turn off after 90 seconds.
• To disable Power Smart, simply untick this option
• Click OK and you’re done. The laptop won’t turn off any more.

If this is not the reason screen turns off in your laptop, then please browse the Laptops catagory in the menu on the right hand side. This could be due to other power settings or there is a hardware fault.