Here are some tips and tricks for troubleshooting and fixing laptop video problems. Video issues are very common within portable computers and with the following tips you should be able to detect and eliminate basic laptop video problems.
Laptop LCD screen has a faint image.
Look at the LCD screen very closely and check if you can see a faint image on the screen. It’s possible that the LCD lid close switch stuck in the “closed” position and the backlight stays off even when you open the LCD screen or turn on the laptop. The switch turns off the backlight when you close the LCD display to save the laptop battery power. Check the LCD lid close switch. Usually it is a small plastic pin located close to the LCD hinges. Try to tap on the switch a few times to turn on the backlight. If after tapping on the LCD lid close switch the backlight stays on, you fixed the problem.
It is also possible that after tapping on the LCD lid close switch the backlight works fine, you see a normal video on the screen for some time and then the backlight turns itself off again. In this case I would blame the FL inverter board. Try to reseat cables on both end of the FL inverter to make a better contact between the cables and the FL inverter board. If it doesn’t help I would try to replace the FL inverter board.
Laptop LCD screen is solid white color.
Most likely it is just a bad connection between the LCD display and the system board. I would try reseating the video cable connector on the back of the LCD screen first and check if it fixes the problem. After that I would try reseating the video cable connector on the system board. I would also try reseating cables if there is no video on the LCD screen at all.
The video on the LCD screen is garbled.
Try to connect the LCD screen to an external monitor. If the external video is fine, you have a problem with the LCD screen or the LCD video cable. You can try to fix the problem by reseating the video cable on the back of the LCD and on the system board.
If you see the same garbled video output on the external monitor most likely it is not the LCD screen problem. In this case the system board (with onboard video) is bad or the video card is bad.
I understand that these tips will not cover all video problems with portable computers. If you have a different problem, you are welcome to leave a comment and I will try to help you if I can. 
Are you looking for a new LCD screen for you laptop? Try searching here.
Here’s a notebook display assembly diagram and tips for finding spare notebook parts.
Related articles:
Fixing notebook LCD screen with water damage.
Screen inverter replacement. Fixing laptop backlight problem
Laptop has bad video on the LCD screen. What is wrong?
Laptop screen shows strange colors. What could be wrong?
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September 6th, 2010 at 6:19 am
hi. wow, so many symptoms but not what i’m having. my tosh qosmio g15R just got new hdd and xp mce install has failed on several attempts. now, the lcd is solid dark grey (dimmly lit) but external monitor display is full screen of repeated horizontal colored bars of a geometric like pattern. some parts of that pattern look like there are paragraphs of text all garbled down the left side of the screen, the external not the laptop. this is all on the external monitor only, which is opposite of everyone elses symptoms. laptop has all power functions : all lights come on except hdd, no beeps at all, speakers have good power-on sound, dvd spins to read disks and lights up, all fans run, and the qosmio splash screen flashes on the lcd for a nano second on startup. i’m pulling my hair out and kicking myself in the butt for letting my friend ‘help’ me install new hdd! i have no clue if this is hdware, sftware, or both! help? anybody?
September 5th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Dustin,
Sounds like LCD screen failure. I think you’ll have to replace the screen.
It’s not related to the inverter failure. When inverter fails, the backlight goes off completely.
There must be video cable in the laptop. Most likely the LCD cable and inverter cables bundled in one harness.
September 5th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
My problem isn’t exactly what I’ve been reading on here. My screen is slightly faint, but no redness. Also, the graphics are not very good and it moves slow. (Example: I move my mouse and a few seconds later it slowly shows my new mouse position) My external monitor works like a charm. I initially thought that it was the inverter so I changed it. The problem obviously had nothing to do with the inverter. I’m thinking now that it is the LCD screen. My gateway has wires going from the motherboard to the inverter and then from the inverter to the screen. There is no separate video cable like on your diagram. What do you think?
September 1st, 2010 at 6:31 am
This is the problem i’m experiencing
->Usually during startup i have this dell logo with a black background,but now a dark red background is coming this red shows up even on my desktop, this also causes most of colors to change.i.e white is not shown as light sky blue and etc ….. the contrast seems to be more…
->There is D+power button to test the LCD(on my DELL inspiron 1420),it displayed different colours with absolutely no problem,there was no distortion in those colors….
->The problem is that the red background is there but not everything is red(some areas have red horizontal stripes ) ,this red bacground causes other colors to look different.. i can adjust brightness and all…..!!
What could this problem be… kindly assist… i read somewhere that LCD’s are robust and doesn’t need replacement unless physically damaged or cracked…!!
August 30th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
sir im using a toshiba dynabook that i bought from japan.it was a vista first then i downgrade into windows xp.now sound dont work and i cant see the driver in the net.sometimes when i open it it hang,sumtimes the screen was garbled.only at the first time i open it.sometimes it run like no problem at all.please help..tnx
August 29th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
moha,
Could be hard drive failure.
August 26th, 2010 at 3:44 am
i have my laptop msi when i turn on just the biose screen run i remove the keyboard but the same probleme stay run to the biose.please give me some idvises if you can help me, thanks.
August 24th, 2010 at 8:07 am
Felix,
I think it’s either bad RAM or video card failure.
Try replacing memory modules. Do you have two modules installed? Try removing them one by one. Test your laptop with each module separately.
If one of the RAM modules is bad, the laptop should start when the bad module removed.
By the way, from your description sounds like you have more than one problem.
August 23rd, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Hello, im currently using a rock premade computer and it appears to have the LCD screen garbling issue. However, it appeared perfectly fine on an external monitor until a few days ago and now nothing appears on the external. I have tried fn + f4 and starting in safe mode but still no image/no signal shows up on the external monitor (tried on two seperate monitors). Any help is much appriciated .
August 18th, 2010 at 3:27 am
may lcd one time display after the 3sec display out when off to on the lcd same problem again