jacey | Flipping Heck!

Sitting in the office today, halfway through answering an email when BB comes in and starts asking how to use the franking machine to send a packet, so we're chatting and I'm sitting back, hands off the keyboard when suddenly my computer (Dell Vostro 1500 laptop) screen flips upside down.

Glurk!

So I do what everyone does when they don't know what to do - I reboot.

Computer reboots with screen upside down.

BB, my computer guru, sucks air in through clenched teeth just like a garage mechanic and says: Well, I've never seen that before!

I do what any sideways thinking person would do in such circumstances, I turn the laptop upside down, balance it on a book so the wires sticking out of the rear USB ports don't catch and start mousing the Dell helpfiles figuring if I can find out how to rotate the screen I can reverse it. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. At least not in any subject I can think of such as 'screen display' and 'flip screen image' etc.

I go into the bios to reboot using the 'last good version'. It reboots upside down again.

Bugger!

So I turn it upside down again and google 'flip screen image' and come up with the answer immediately - at exactly the same time as BB comes back down from his computer with the same answer. Control - alt - up/down/left/right arrow depending on whether you want it flipped 180 or 90 in either direction. Simple. So why did it flip while I wasn't touching it and why wasn't the whole flip and rotate thing in the bloody Dell manual indexed under something sensible?

Aaargh.