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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July 14th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Temple,
Maybe your battery will not charge because the power jack is loose? Check the post I linked to.
July 14th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Hi cj2600,
Do you think that because my system has a Celeron 399 processor ans 192mb ram while running windows xp pro might have something to do with the ‘Ghosting’ effect show
ing up inthe video system?
Thaks!
July 14th, 2007 at 8:27 am
Hi cj2600,
I tried hooking up an externa; monitor but without muck success. I plugged the monitor in back of the laptop but the monitor did not come on just the laptop screen remains on . What am I doing wrong?
July 13th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Hi cj2600,
The Ghosting starts right after windows xp loadsl I will test it on an external monitor tomorrow. But in the meantime, so you have iny ideas of the cause?
July 13th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
I switch on my laptop and it shows a light both hard driv LED and battery LED shows but about five seconds the lights went off again, so i try ccharging the battry and when I pluged it in the power to try charge it, the ccharger LED will show and in some minutes the charger LED will go off, and will not charge, pls guys I need some advice on whate the problem is and on how to fix it? thank you.
July 13th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
P J JONES,
Do you see this ghosting only when Windows is loaded or it appear right from the startup screen? Did you test your laptop with an external monitor? Do you see ghosting effect on the external video?
July 13th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
All the images on my Toshiba Satellite 2595DS appears to be trailed by ‘Double Images’ or GHOSTS What would cause this type of image problem ?
July 4th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
dalobo,
I didn’t know that you have a separate contrast wheel.
For me it is hard to guess what is wrong because I have never fixed laptops with a contrast wheel (contrast board), modern Toshiba laptops do not have it.
I still doubt that your problem is related to the inverter board. The inverter board works as a power supply for the backlight lamp, it converts low voltage DC power into high voltage AC. From my experience, the inverter board either works or not, there is no intermediate state causing the screen to be too bright or half-bright. When the inverter board works fine, you can see the backlight, when it doesn’t work, there is no backlight.
I’ve fixed hundreds modern Toshiba laptops with backlight problems but I’ve never seen that a faulty inverter causes the screen to be over bright.
I’m not sure how the contrast board works but it could be your problem or your problem is somehow related to the LCD screen.
Sorry man, cannot give you more accurate guess.
July 4th, 2007 at 5:54 am
My screen is white (over bright) from the moment I turn it on, until I turn it off. The contrast wheel brings the image into a bit more viewable range. The colors are all right. The Toshibia comes up red, and the windows logo has the right colors and the blue screen of check diisk is a deep blue. To see this though, the LCD has to be bent back as far as it can be, and the contrast wheel must be turned all the way down. I have the BIOS set to smii-bright too, which seemed to help a bit.
Many years ago I had this laptop in for an issue similar to this (At least I thought so) and they said they replaced the inverter board and the contrast board. (Twice! I just do not remember the symptons…) That is why I suspeced one of those. The contrast wheel does make a change so I figured it was not that.
Couldnt the inverter make it to bright?
I have seen somewhere that an all white screen could be the cause of a fualty wiring harnes… what do you think?
I can provide pictures if need be.
Thanks for the help.
July 3rd, 2007 at 11:46 pm
dalobo,
I don’t think your problem is related to the inverter board because the screen still lights up. When you have a faulty inverter, the screen is almost black and you can barely see the image.
I think you might have a bad LCD screen. This is my guess.