[geofftate]

Booted up today and the backlight won't come on. Worked fine yesterday, no signs of trouble. Adjusting the brightness from key commands does nothing in Windows or OS X. The display itself works: I can look closely and see the dark desktop. External video out works fine. Seems like the backlight just suddenly died, no trauma involved. Anybody have any other ideas before I contact Dell about repairs? I'm very much not looking forward to that arduous process...

Thanks!

[geofftate]

Forgot to mention that I disassembled the machine to make sure connections were tight, particularly the display connector near the CPU. All connections looked solid. I didn't open the display casing itself, though.

[geofftate]

Guess I gotta grit my teeth and get it done. Chatting with Dell support now who is dispatching a prepaid shipping box for return shipping for repairs. Good thing my Mini is more toy than essential. And good thing I hadn't gotten around to reselling my original SSD. Hopefully this will turn out to be mostly-painless.

[dindon]

i also have my upper left back light sometimes dead

[Wipeout]

Happened to me. Had to send it back to Dell.

[geofftate]

Thank you Dell for using FedEx Ground, the worst carrier imaginable. Called for a Fri AM pickup, pickup came Mon PM. Three extra days' delay in PC repair. I always have ridiculously bad service from FedEx Ground, which they treat like the runt of FedEx offerings. Sigh...

[fyrfyter]

Agreed. FedEx blows. They rarely deliver stuff as indicated datewise by tracking numbers. I had a package one time that was on a FedEx truck for delivery. Never even attempted to deliver at my house (I was home all day). I checked the tracking number in the afternoon and it was in the next city north of us?!?!?! It took them to the next day to deliver it. I always cringe when some place says they use FedEx. I would rather have USPS deliver the item.

[mini-size me]

Dell used to use DHL, which I didn't like either. Last October I was home all day waiting for my Mini and was surprised to see the online status change to "delivery attempted." They were supposed to redeliver the next day, but alas, there was nada. I finally caught the truck as I was leaving home on the third day and was able to grab my Mini literally off the truck.

[geofftate]

Finally got my Mini 9 back... with a lovely dark spot on the screen! Plus it wasn't repacked well (likely cause of the prob) and the repair notes said "OS Restore." Wow. Just... wow.

[geofftate]

After 10 minutes getting the phone system to recognize my "express" service code and being hung up on twice, I have a new repair dispatch number. Yay, another two weeks without my Mini...