When I close the lid of my laptop in safe mode, the screen goes black and I have to turn off my laptop, why?

Question

In normal mode, everything is fine. It's a Dell Inspiron E1705. In safe mode, when I close the lid, screen is black so I have to restart my laptop to see things normally. Several months ago, Dell tech told me that they will replace the motherboard and the LCD display. But I wasn't in USA. Now that I'm back in USA, I called Dell and a tech told me that it's not hardware but software problem. He made me do a repair on XP but it didn't solve the problem. Then he proposed me to reinstall XP! I told him that I have many professional programs on my laptop and it would take me too much time to reinstall all the programs, configure them, and the datas.
So I said no. Then after the XP repair, I lost 1 day to do windows updates and to fix a few programs that didn't work anymore.
What do you think? is it a hardware or software problem? should I leave it like that or do something else?

But in the Advanced tab of "Power options properties", there is the setting: "when I close the lid of my portable computer, Do nothing", instead of stand by or hibernate. So that's not this problem.

Answer 1

Because Standby AND Hibernate don't work in Safe Mode.

Read your Dell User Manual.

"Then he proposed me to reinstall XP! I told him that I have many professional programs on my laptop and it would take me too much time to reinstall all the programs, configure them, and the datas. So I said no."

Big Mistake!!!

You must have the original programs somewhere. You should also do backups regularly, if not do it now. Then, bite the bullet and make the time, if you want your PC to work properly, it is a software problem.