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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July 13th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Akash,
This is not a big problem and you can continue using the laptop.
July 13th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Pete,
Comment 426.
Unfortunately, you’ll have to guess. It looks like there is connection issue between the video card and the motherboard and either one could be the culprit.
July 12th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Hi
I have a 2,5 years old Fujitsu-Siemens M4438G laptop, with Nvidia GeForce graphic card, and a 1900×1200 17″ monitor.
Two days ago it started displaying pink vertical bars on all white areas (blank pages). Images appear fine, but a closer look reveals strange colours on bright edges. In Adobe Photoshop, the bars are green on the normally grey background.
See http://www.morofabrikken.com/screen2.jpg (download the picture, it shows up really strange in Internet Explorer).
External monitor works fine, and when I move or torque the screen nothing changes.
I’ve tried system restore, to a date before the lines appeared, but did not help.
The computer has been exposed to sunlight through a window pretty often, both when turned on and off.
Regards
Stian A. Jensen
Norway
July 12th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Trade price laptop lcd screen | TFT | WXGA and Ultraglossy as standard, very very cheap prices. It might be worth throwing your broken screen out and getting a replacement unit, depending of course on how damaged the laptop lcd screen actually is.
Hope that helps some1
Nick
July 7th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Dear Sir,
I have IBM Thinkpad R51. It shows very thin 5 to 6 vertical lines on LCD. I just want to know how serious this issue is. I want to continue with these lines as they are not problamatic for me. Should I continue or not. Will these grow more in number and size in the future ? How long I will be able to continue with these ?
July 6th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
I have the same problems as you have shown above in Example 2. I want to know whether this is a big problem or not. I want to continue with it, I do not feel any inconvenience working with it. Should I continue ? How long it will work properly in the future ? Or will it grow more and more ?
June 29th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Hello – I have a Dell Inspiron 8600 that started to display vertical green and /or other color lines on the LCD – same thing when connected to an external display. I removed the video card go5650 (128meg) and reseated it. All was fine for a few days, then it started coming back. When I push on the keyboard (in the area that sits above the GPU – the problem goes away. I’ve tried reseating the card several times, but the problem keeps coming back intermittently. The notebook is almost 5-years old – But I love it. I’m torn between replacing the video card ($100) or the motherboard ($110) – I don;t want to make the wrong choice. Can anyone advise from experience, what’s more likely the culprit?? Thanks!
June 25th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
grage,
I’m pretty sure you have a hardware related problem. Apparently, some components have to warm up before they start working properly.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
I have a very different problem than others. My laptop boots with a very very dim screen. However the desktop picture can be viewed with a closer look. After 30-40 minutes the screen comes back to normal state. Even the screen doesn’t gets off on rotating it. The most amazing thing is that once screen come back to normal state then even after a RESTART/SHUTDOWN the screen doesn’t get dimmed at next boot. But If I leave it TURNED OFF for about 2 or more hrs, the screen again gets dimmed at next boot.
Also an external monitor works fine all time. I am using compaq presario v5000 series notebook. Model v5202TU.
Is it a hardware or software problem? Thanks for any suggestions!
June 21st, 2008 at 9:22 am
My macbook pro is connected to a 26inch samsung LCD HD and i have noticed when i look at certian images there are bleck vertical lines on the HD, not always but when i use logic pro and watch films from my external drive, does anyone no this problem i dont seem to have the problem when i use internet. thanks