Here I’m going to post some laptop screen photos showing bad video output. I’ll explain what was wrong with the screen and how I fixed it. I plan to ad more examples as soon as I get new pictures. If you have your own example (and know how to fix it) please let me know and I’ll post it too.
Here’s some help for finding a correct part for your laptop.
Other post related to troubleshooting laptop video problems:
How to troubleshoot and fix laptop video problems
Taking apart notebook LCD screen
Replacing LCD screen inverter
The newly installed screen is not working
Example 1.
Here’s a picture of Satellite M55 LCD screen I made this morning. I got this video output as soon as I started the laptop. There were a lot of vertical lines, and they were changing color without any pattern. To me it looked like Northern Lights (never seen in real life) 
. The external monitor worked fine.
As soon as I applied some tension to the screen it changed the pattern. Some horizontal lines appeared in the middle of the LCD.
Here’s the difference. When I torque the screen, the image appears but it’s distorted with some horizontal lines running across the screen.
Reseating the video cable didn’t make any change and the problem was fixed after I replaced the LCD screen.
Example 2.
I took this picture from Toshiba Satellite M65. I think that this example is very typical. One day you wake up, turn on the laptop and see one or a few hair-like vertical lines in different colors.
When you move the LCD screen some lines might disappear or more lines appear on the screen. A video output on an external screen would be perfect, without any lines. Unfortunately, these lines indicate a screen problem. I’ve never seen this kind of video output caused by a bad video cable or bad FL inverter board. My laptop was fixed after I replaced the LCD screen.
Example 3.
The photo below comes from Toshiba Satellite 5205. The laptop displays identical vertical lines all over the LCD screen as soon as I turn it on. Sometimes these lines are red, sometimes they are blue, sometimes they become wider and change color to white.
The same pattern appears on the external monitor. It displays same vertical lines. When the same video defect appears on both monitors – internal LCD screen and external screen, then most likely it happens because of a bad video card. On some laptops the video card is integrated into the system board, on other models it’s a separate module.
In this example, the vertical lines were caused by a failed video memory on the system board. I’ve tested the video memory with Microscope utility and it failed the test. In Toshiba Satellite 5205 the video memory is integrated into the system board. To fix the problem, I’ll have to replace the board. (We do not have equipment to replace the memory module itself).
Example 4.
Here’s another example of a bad LCD screen. My bad! It wasn’t the LCD screen problem.
As soon as I turned on the laptop, I was getting these reddish marks on the LCD screen but not on the external monitor. Reseating and replacing the video cable didn’t help. The problem disappeared when I installed my test LCD screen. Yes, for some reason I wasn’t able to reproduce the problem on my test LCD screen. But the reddish video appeared again as soon as I replaced the screen. I guess it happened because the system board had some kind of intermittent problem with onboard video or video connector. Long story short, I had to replace the system board and it fixed the problem. Yep, I misdiagnosed this laptop.
Example 5.
Here’s one more example of a faulty LCD screen. The left half of the screen works just fine but the right side is completely white.
Example 6.
Here’s another laptop with a bad LCD screen. This time it’s a tablet PC.
Example 7.
This screen looks like the screen on the example 1. I hooked up an external monitor and the external video works perfectly fine.
Here’s the difference. When I torque the screen, the image appears but it’s distorted with some horizontal lines running across the screen.
After a few seconds the image washes away.
I had to replace the LCD screen.
Example 8.
This laptop displays inverted colors right from the startup. As you see, the Toshiba logo is light green instead of red. The background is light gray instead of black. The Intel logo should be blue on a white background but it is red on a black background.
When your laptop displays inverted colors as on the picture above, this is an indication of a bad screen. You’ll have to replace the screen.
Example 9.
Here are two more screens. In both cases this problem is related to the LCD screen, witch means the screen has to be replaced.
On the image below you see a white band running from the top of the screen to the bottom. This band appears right from the laptop startup and runs through the logo too.
On the following image only the left side of the screen is working properly. This problem is caused by faulty LCD screen.
Are you looking for a new LCD screen for your laptop? Try here.
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May 3rd, 2007 at 6:11 am
my hp zv6000 needed an inverter 2 months ago when the screen went dim. After I replaced it, everything was OK….. now the screen works for a little while and then it shows displays like example 1 and 7 photos on this page, unfortunately you mentioned that you needed to replace the screen. The only other symptom that I see is that I can torgue the screen and it will eventually go away, also the cursor remains frozen when the screen is bad….. does this sound like it needs a replacement or should I check to see if the cables are loose? could this be a result of the new inverter? thanks!
April 29th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Satyas,
Try running Hitachi’s drive fitness test, you’ll find a link in Resources on the right side of the site. This test will help you to find out if the hard drive is bad. If for some reason you cannot start this test (you mentioned that the laptop gets stuck in BIOS), you can remove the hard drive from the laptop and install it into an external USB enclosure. After that you connect this enclosure to another working PC or laptop. If the hard dive is detected and you can access it, probably there is nothing wrong with the hard drive itself and you have an issue with the motherboard. If the hard drive is not detected, most likely it’s bad and should be replaced.
April 29th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Nick Ouimet,
I think you can find a new LCD screen on eBay, probably you can find entire display pane. HP maintenance manuals have instructions for replacing the display panel.
April 29th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Anonymous,
I just started a new discussion regarding Toshiba Satellite A60 and A65 notebook problems, just in case if you have any Satellite A65 related questions in the future.
April 29th, 2007 at 8:16 am
hi, i have this weird problem with my laptop m55, when i power on, it gets struck at the initial toshiba welcome screen never goes to windows. if i go into bios, it gets struck inside bios. if i put a new windows CD, it says hard drive not found ? does this mean my hard drive has crashed totally ? can you suggest me a way of conforming that my hard drive has gone bad ?
April 28th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Hi I Have an HP Pavilion ZV6000 Series. (HP Pavilion ZV6131US) and my BROTHER steped on the screen. It is now broken how or where can i get a new one and install it myself????
Thanks
April 28th, 2007 at 2:17 am
I had a situation that was like example 2 where there would be weird vertical lines that would show up during boot up and during any programs running in compatibility mode. This was on a A65-S1362 and the problem seem to be some sort of connector on the motherboard with the video card. I place some downward pressure near the dvd drive and it fixed the problem. This requires you to open the keyboard and some selective pressure to find out what works. I think it is some alignment issue with the video card.
Thank you guys and this site for giving me a way to fix my laptop display!
April 24th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Simon,
Do you bend the laptop base or you bend the LCD screen? If you bend the LCD screen and it changes colors back to normal, then probably it’s a faulty LCD screen. If you have to bend the laptop base in order to get normal colors, then there is something is wrong with the motherboard.
Here’s what I noticed with Toshiba Satellite P35 laptops. Sometimes the screen might change the background color because of a faulty video cable connector on the motherboard. To confirm this issue, you can remove the keyboard strip (in order to get access to the video cable connector) as it shown on steps 5-7 in this teardown guide and press gently on the video cable connector while the laptop is still running. If the background changes color or you getting other issues with video when you pressing on the connector, most likely it’s bad. In this case we usually replace the motherboard.
April 22nd, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Henry,
If the laptop has bad video on both internal LCD and external screen, then I would assume something is wrong with the graphics card.
I’m not sure about that. I just went through the Dell service manual for Latitude C610 laptop and they do not mention the graphics card anywhere and it looks like it’s a part of the motherboard. On the other hand, I found a used graphics card for Latitude C610 on eBay. So it’s not clear if your computer has a discrete video card or not. I guess there are two different modifications and you’ll have to take a look inside.
April 21st, 2007 at 8:01 pm
I have a Toshiba p35 laptop and one day when i started it up the windows screen which has a black backround was red i bent my laptop a little and it fixed the problem but when i let go it goes back. Also when i log on any white screens have a light blue horizontal lines som lines flicker and other dont. If any one knows how to fix it please comment.