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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March 13th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
Mark,
If the same problem appears on both internal and external monitors, it must be related to the video card.
Do you mean it works normal for a while and later goes back to six screens, even in Ubuntu? Yes, this is odd.
Sounds like the video card failure.
It’s possible it works normal in Ubuntu until the video card heats up and fails after that.
Does your laptop have onboard video card? Is it NVIDIA chip?
If you have nothing to lose, you can try this fix: http://www.laptoprepair101.com.....hics-chip/
Proceed at your own risk.
March 12th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
The six Split screen problem is what i am seeing also on an ASUS notebook, it cannot be the LCD thats failed as the problem also transfers to an external screen if one is used.
3 tiny screens on left (top of a 4th at the very bottom) Inch and a bit wide black stipe down the middle of the screen, and then 3 tiny screens on the right (that go off the right hand side of the screen, also signs of the top of a 4th screen at the bottom)
if i boot from an ubuntu installation disk, the problem will cure itself for a while.. which is odd,
Any Ideas ?
March 6th, 2011 at 4:48 pm
hey there…my lap top screen shows a white color display in a straight line. About 1/8 of the screen is white but it is still functional. can you help me with my problem?
February 28th, 2011 at 11:12 pm
Hi! I’m currently having problems with my laptop screen display, it has red horizontal lines (that grows thicker as days pass) at the topmost area and it blinks around every 5 seconds..it also causes the display to move up and down everytime it blinks.
what do you think is the problem and what should i do with it? is it hardware failure (should i change my lcd or something), or could it be an effect of a recent trojan that i have recently removed from my computer?
thank you so much!
February 17th, 2011 at 8:27 am
richard,
If your original screen works fine but the new one fails, most likely the new screen is not compatible or bad.
Make sure you use a compatible screen.
February 17th, 2011 at 5:10 am
install my new screen for my sony vaio but when I turn on the screen changes from blue, red, yellow but when I installed the original screen works really well
because I do that?
February 9th, 2011 at 9:49 pm
maart,
Yes, it’s possible. I’ve seen a problem like that many times before.
Apparently, the graphics card still works fine because you can see image on the external monitor but the circuit responsible for the inverter/backlight power is failing. This is just a guess.
February 9th, 2011 at 3:40 pm
jahna,
Do you mean you can hear the Windows startup sound but there is no video at all?
Can you get image on the external monitor?
February 8th, 2011 at 11:12 pm
Hi,
I have HP Pavilion dv7-1133cl that has LCD with inverter (old type). The display won’t come up while it will display through vga port with either project or external monitor. When I turn the power own, I can see very faint hp logo flash once (but very hard to see) and go away. While holding on the power button to shut down you will notice that very faint light flash and go. All this lights or hp logo are barely visible. I check with both another working LCD and inverter separately but non of this test did help. This means the lcd bulb is good. I also tried with another working video cable (internal-motherboard to LCD), still no luck. I got the same result like initially got (faint HP logo or very faint flash light). The video card seems to built-in with the mother board which is very close to the external vga port. My question is can the video card gone bad while the video through the vga port is working fine?
Let know what can be the possible solution.
Thank you in advance.
Maart
February 5th, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Hi I have an hp G60 and when I turn on my computer the sound and power are on but a black screen I cant see a mouse or anything please help