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:
How I took apart and repaired my notebook LCD screen with water damage
Screen inverter replacement. Fixing laptop backlight problem
Laptop has bad video on the LCD screen. What is wrong?
If you find this article useful, please consider making a donation to the author. Thank you!
March 8th, 2008 at 6:25 am
i have a problem with my laptop, the screen splits in 3 parts so that the image is repeated 2 times. how can you help me?
March 6th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Nathan,
First of all, test the laptop with an external monitor. Maybe video got stuck in the external mode somehow. Try switching video from external to internal mode. I’m not sure about Acer laptops but on Toshibas you can do it with Fn+F5, on HP Fn+F4, on IBM Fn+F7, not sure about Acers.
Can you boot the laptop in Safe Mode? If you can, uninstall the video driver. Then start the laptop in normal mode and reinstall the video driver.
March 6th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
kinnari,
you’ll have to send it to a repair shop. It sounds like a hardware problem. Do not repair it yourself, you’ll loose the warranty.
March 4th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
With my laptop I turn it on, It shows the acer logo then the windows loading screen, Then it goes blank and stayes that way but yet I can still hear the start up and login sounds what can I do to fix it without having to restore the whole thing????
March 2nd, 2008 at 1:55 am
its been just 40 days buying an HP laptop,,,till then it had no problems,,2day when i used it after a week, i on it,,all the display light work but i see no video on the screen,is the problem very grave ?
February 29th, 2008 at 4:10 am
My Toshiba Libretto 50ct has a problem with the internal TFT. It boots and operates normally, and I can control it using UltraVNC or by attaching an external monitor, so it’s not an issue with the graphics chip.
But the TFT stays mostly black – after switching on, it gives a short flash showing colored noise with a darker spot in the middle for about a second, then turns nearly black and only shows vertical brighter and darker lines that change in appearance somewhat whenever the screen content is changed. Shaking or pressing did not help.
The backlighting still works and on very rare occassions, the screen turns on correctly and then shows no sign of any problem until I reboot.
I’ve tried re-seating each and every connector that might be involved – the large connector from the main board to the panel, as well as all the connectors leading from there to the Sharp TFT module itself and the connectors inside the module. I’ve noticed some connectors that, when unplugged, cause a solid white screen, but otherwise the problem persisted.
It would be a shame to retire this cute little thing to a drawer just because of the screen.
Does anybody have a suggestion as to what the exact cause could be? If I knew for sure that this would solve the problem, I might buy a replacement screen or wait for a damaged item on ebay that has a working screen.
February 26th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Hi there,
Who ever can help me I would appreciate it.
I have a Dell laptop part No. F0588 revA01 and I have problems with the video.
It works fine on aregular monitor.
The backlight works fine but no video, I unppluged and pluged blugged back the cable from the board and also frm the LCD screen, what do you think th problem might be?
Thanks in advance,
Tony Figliomeni
February 25th, 2008 at 2:55 am
I have a IBM notebook, it will not turn on at all. Before it went of it said low battery I plugged into the mains but it still said low battery. Now it won’t turn on at all. Should I be replacing the battery or will it be the charger lead?
February 13th, 2008 at 6:33 am
Ceaser,
Can you find and install a known good memory module?
February 13th, 2008 at 5:54 am
Walter O. McCants,
This is not related to the inverter board, that’s for sure.
Is the screen uncentered on the BIOS level too or it happens only in Windows?
Did you try changing screen resolution?
Did you install exactly the same video cable (with the same FRU number) as the original one?