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 31st, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Anthony,
Test the laptop in safe mode. Do you see the vertical line in safe mode?
Check out video on the external screen? Does it appear on the external screen?
If this is a thin (1-2 pixel wide) line, then most likely this is related to the LCD screen. I guess you cannot see this line on the starup screen because the line is not visible on a black background.
Try this. Load Windows and change the desktop background to black color. Do you still see the line?
July 31st, 2007 at 7:49 pm
My girlfriend has a Toshiba P30 with a problem similar to one a few comments back. After playing a game in full screen, when the screen resolution changed back, a thin yellowish vertical line appeared about a third of the way along her monitor. When she turns the computer on, and the Toshiba splash screen is on, the line is not there, but once the Windows XP loading screen comes up, it is there and stays there the whole time the computer is on. Is there any hope for the LCD?
July 30th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Hi again, I started reading other comments and questions posted, and I plugged to an external monitor and there wasn’t any problem with a vertical line. So then I tried unplugging and plugging the video cable again. Then I reinstalled the video VGA? driver. Still have the line on the screen. Do you think I should try replacing the video cable next? Or is it the LCD?
July 30th, 2007 at 7:32 am
Hi, I have an ASUS A3000 laptop. Just recently, one dotted blue or green vertical line has been moving up and down the screen. This line shows up even before Windows comes on, as soon as there’s light. Someone says it could be the video card. Is this the same as a graphics card? Or is it the LCD screen. Would really appreciate your help. Thank you.
July 26th, 2007 at 5:00 am
hi. A while ago my dc jack on my Sony Vaio PCG-V505 was acting up, so I had it replaced. Ever since then the video on my machine has been garbaged. So, I took it back to the repair place 4 times, and each time they found nothing. Finally, they said it was the LCD. Then, since I was skeptical, I connected the computer to a monitor at my house using a docking station, and the picture was still messed up. You say up there that the problem is probably the video card. Do you think they messed something up when they replaced the dc jack?
July 22nd, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Heres goes nothing, My laptop just today has acquired a LCD problem. It all started with a purple vertical line on the left side of my screen and that would blink for 2 seconds and show up every 10 – 20 seconds or so. I ignored it, and then alot of little horizontal blue lines appeared on my screen. And they resize and move with my screen when I changed resolution size. I was working with 1920 x 1200 resolution, and now I cant get to it because I had to unistall my graphics card driver. Seems that My screen goes all black when its installed. So I either run my laptop in safe mode, or with a VGA regular driver in normal mode. Heres a ss.
http://img247.imageshack.us/im.....amplq1.jpg
I also cant get my laptop to hook up to my tv via S-video, or an old CRT I got via adapter. If I could I could test the other screens to see if it had horizontal lines or not. Anyways… If anyone has any idea how to help me Plz tell me
I’ll be around. If I cant fix the problem I’m just gonna go up to a compaq store and have them take a look at it.
July 21st, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Marianne,
It depends.
1. If you cannot connect to the Internet using the network cable, most likely there is no connection.
2. If you cannot connect to the Internet using the wireless card, there could be a connection. The wireless antennas are located inside the display assembly. It is possible that you damaged the wireless antennas while replacing the inverter board. This is just a guess.
July 20th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
I replaced the inverterboard on my laptop, but now am having trouble connecting to the internet.
Any connection?
July 15th, 2007 at 2:55 am
Hi cj2600,
I hooded my laptop up to my external monittor and the video worked just fine! Windows XP PRO was installed along with the DVD drive on top of I believe Windows 98. I know the driver info but I am having great difficulty in locating the driver from Trident.
Thanks
July 14th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
P J JONES,
To switch the video signal from the internal screen to the external monitor, you can use the following key combination. Press and hold down the Fn key and at the same time press on the F5 key until the video switches to the external monitor.
Before you come to any conclusion, test the laptop with the external screen. If the external video is not ghosting, most likely it’s not a software related problem.
I don’t think so. Here are XP requirements. 300MHz or higher processor, 128MB or higher RAM, so you are good here. Yes, your laptop will run very slow with XP but you shouldn’t see any ghosting effect because of your CPU and memory.
Did you run XP before on this laptop or you just installed it? Check the video driver, make sure it’s a correct one.