There is a hole, above the keyboard, near the hinges on my thinkpad A31.
There's a matching stud in the lid, which appears to mesh with a switch
which was recessed in this hole when the lid was closed.

The problem is that the switch has fallen lose, and the hole is now empty,
so I'm assuming the thinkpad can no longer tell when I close the lid.

Since I never made use of any automatic functionality when the lid closed (I
didn't have it suspend for instance), I was wondering if I can just ignore
this.

Thanks.

Chip

(I seldom leave it running for long periods of time with the lid closed, but
there are occasional very long downloads that I let run overnight this way).

"Chip Orange" <acorange@comcast.net> wrote:
Unless there's a piece of metal (the switch) floating around loose
inside your computer, you are OK in the short term. In the long term,
you might use the backlight lifetime up faster than otherwise, your
battery will have a shorter life, and the machine will run warmer with
the lid closed than it would otherwise, but none of those are fatal.

<William P.N. Smith> wrote in message
news:2ideu09frt5nai4b3s993ffi8aped5ku63@4ax.com...
Thanks for the ideas. I had the same ones, so I made sure that the power
settings would turn off the screen after 10 minutes of inactivity. With
this feature, it seems to me that there won't be much difference in screen
life, but I wasn't sure what else that switch might control besides screen
on/off and going into suspend or hibernate modes.

Thanks.

Chip

I doubt it does anything else - if you leave the computer on with the lid
closed, then a 10 minute timer to switch off the screen, or pressing Fn-F3
before you close it should solve your problems.

Duncan.

"Chip Orange" <acorange@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:Fd2dnUcv_LEp9nXcRVn-2A@comcast.com...