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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October 29th, 2006 at 12:52 am
Hi there. I’ve recently inherited an Inspiron 8000 which works perfectly apart from one thing. When the display resolution is set to the lowest setting the windows desktop is off centre, to the bottom right of the screen.When the resolution is set to the highest setting the right and bottom 3 inches of the desktop are off the screen! I have updated bios,drivers,reformatted the hard drive and re-installed windows. Any help would be much appreciated.
October 27th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
Hi, i have a prob similar to the 1st one that has been discussed. There r lot of horizontal lines that appear on the lcd and the whole display looks inverted and out of focus. Is the problem very common with M55s?
October 25th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Hi there. Yeah, i got the equipement here to rework those motherboards CJ2600.. all the issues you’re explaining about the toshiba boards showing distorted video. If you’re interested, contact me at fusion.info@gmail.com. Later, Vincent.
October 24th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Hi Sean,
Yeah that’s a weird one. I’ve seen a few Satellite 105 laptops with a problem like that. It works fine for 10-15 minutes and then the screen goes gray with a few horizontal white lines.
When I got a Satellite A105 laptop with this problem for the first time it took me just 10 minutes to troubleshoot it. I connected an external monitor and set the video output on both screens. After 10-15 minutes the internal LCD screen failed but the external video was fine. I just ordered a new screen and video cable (as a precaution) because it looked like 100% LCD issue. BUT replacing the screen with video cable DIDN’T fix the problem. The same gray screen appeared after about 10 minutes. Reflashing the BIOS didn’t help either. After that I ordered a new system board and the problem was fixed.
Since then I’ve repaired about 5-6 Satellites A105 like that and resolved the video issue by replacing the system board.
I don’t want you to encourage buying a new system board right away, because in your case it could be just a bad screen. That’s would be nice if you can find a spare LCD screen and test it for a while. But from my experience this kind of failure on Satellite A105 laptops is caused by faulty system board. As I said before, that’s a wired one.
October 24th, 2006 at 10:00 am
How about this one. Toshiba A105-S2716 Laptop and everything is working fine. Then the screen goes grey with a few white lines running horizontal across it. The external monitor is working fine, and if I cycle through the Fn-F5 key, the LCD starts working again for awhile. Also, if I reboot it starts to work again for awhile. The time it takes to go to the grey screen is intermittent though. It could be 2 minutes or 20. I’m not sure which component may be bad. Thanks for a great site.
October 23rd, 2006 at 7:17 pm
Carlos,
Are you getting these horizontal lines even before Windows loads or they appear only in Windows environment?
Test the laptop with an external monitor attached. If the external video as bad as the internal, then it could be the motherboard (or video card) failure. If the external video is fine, and you have a problem only with the internal LCD, then I would check if the video cable got loose. Probably you’ll have to reseat both connections – one on the motherboard and one on the back of the LCD screen. If reseating the cable will not help, probably it’s a hardware issue.
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:29 am
I was working wth my computer just fine, suddently it went to dimmer white , and freezed my laptop completely.
Rebooted and now I get a lot of horizontal color lines.
Can this be fixed, I have a picture if you want to email me my email is porracarlos80@hotmail.com
October 18th, 2006 at 9:24 pm
A I,
Is your laptop still under warranty? It could be a major issue with the LCD screen or with the video card. A new computer shouldn’t have any pink tint between characters.
Connect an external monitor and turn on the laptop. If you can see the same pink tint on the external monitor, then it could be related to the motherboard (video card). If the external monitor displays characters fine and the problem appears only on the internal LCD screen, then it could be the screen problem.
I guess it also could be related to the video driver, but I’ve never seen a video driver causes such problems (like tint).
I would update/reflash the BIOS, reinstall the video drive and finally reimage the drive back to factory defaults. If the problem still exists it’s most likely a hardware issue. Call the tech support.
October 18th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Hi! I just got a new laptop: the HP Pavilion DV8333EA and I’m already facing problems! It’s not a major issue but there seems to be a strong pink tint between text on my lcd screen; particularly between vertical characters such as ‘t’, ‘l’ and ‘i’. It’s quite distracting and I didn’t expect such from a brand new laptop. How can I resolve this?
October 12th, 2006 at 11:05 am
Cheebster,
Satellite 5205 has an onboard graphics controller (integrated into the system board) with a dedicated video memory (external, not shared). You can test the video memory with a utility called “MicroScope”. So I did run the video memory test and it failed. I guess it’s possible to replace the video memory but we do not repair system boards unless it’s something simple like a failed power jack.
Please share you knowledge if you know how to fix this problem without replacing the systemboard.
What do you mean by that, can you explain?