Laptop screen broken help!

[kaszal]

Does anyone recognise this fault on my laptop screen? The screen is still bright but the detail is almost illegible and there's vertical lines everywhere. It happened suddenly overnight. I've connected the laptop to an external projector and the image is fine so I guess the CPU/graphics card is OK (?) I did a quick search and found it might be the inverter. Can I replace this at home?

Please help as I need this for work, not to mention browsing my favourite rc website

[jphillips]

hi there

this problem looks like the invertor you can get then off ebay

if you get stuck My mate works for a computer repair company and can get almost any part

t

[bodgit]

I broke my screen last year and once you get the bezel and screen off the invertor is easy to change it just plugs in to cable both ends.

[Richard Lowe]

If the backlight is still on (ie - screen lit up) it's not the inverter, especially if it's an LED screen that doesn't have one

It's either the panel itself or the ribbon cable that connects the screen to the motherboard, the panels are roughly £35 and cable's around £10-15 from ebay. If the screen corruption changes as you open/close the lid chances are it's the cable, otherwise its the panel.

If you post a picture of the laptop or the model number I can give you an idea how easy they are to take apart, I do loads at work.

[neallewis]

Reseat any ribbon or surface mount connectors relating to the display. Also check/move any display cables that carry signals to the screen from the main-board. Some laptop models can break cables around the hinges. A failing cable could exhibit the fault shown. Locate your inverter, again check and re-seat any cables/connectors. get the inverter model number off the original unit, google or ebay search for a replacement. It won't be expensive, and simple to change if you have got this far, but as Richard said above, if the back light is on, then it ain't the inverter.
You can normally pickup whole screens salvage or replacement spares cheap enough too from ebay.

[imull]

If you have problems fixing it and can survive a couple of weeks I can take a look at it at the Apex GP.

As Neil says, it looks like the cable or it could be the GPU (is it an nvidia based laptop?)