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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November 24th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
I have a P35-S629 that, yesterday, developed a different video problem than those written about. Beginning from the Toshiba start screen, the right half of the LCD has horizontal lines and poor quality, similar to Safe Mode. Lots of flickering too. The left side is perfect. I don’t think the laptop was dropped or damaged.
What could be the problem? Where should I start to troubleshoot?
Is the video card separate or part of the motherboard?
thanks
November 24th, 2006 at 3:50 am
hie there
i have the problem in ex 2. but i dont get a display on my external monitor either.. i opened the laptop then disconnected the lcd connection and then tried to connect to the external monitor.. it worked fine.. but with the lcd connected the external disaply is simply not there.. and the lines are also no solid they are in dots moving from top to bottom.. and few of them vice vera…
November 24th, 2006 at 3:42 am
Hello all,
First up great site! I seem to be having a bit of a problem with my Toshiba Satellite P30-145.
I turned on my laptop one morning to find the screen had reduced resolution size and colour to 640×480 and 4-bit colour. Anytime I try to alter the settings they switch back to 640×480 and 4-bit as soon as I apply or ok the command window. I have hooked the laptop to an external monitor and it is the exact same problem.
I have tried to start the computer in safe mode to try and isolate a driver which could be playing with things but that does not help.
I then switched out of safe mode to have a play with the video card.
I deactivated the video card (ATI Mobility Radeon 9600/9700) from the device manager and restarted the laptop. Upon restart, the colour system had reverted to full 32-bit but the screen resolution was still set at 640×480. I then went into the display manager, had a play about, and managed to get the screen up to 1024×768. This is the best setting I have managed to get but is still some way short of full resolution (not to mention the laptop has slowed to snails pace and paging rates are awful).
I tried reactivating the video card through device manager and keep the new settings, but as soon as I do that the laptops go’s all the way back to the original problem.
I do not have the recovery disk or the driver disk for the video card so cannot try the uninstall route. This is pretty much as far as I can get. I hope that this problem is something simple.
I am a CAD Tech so I am comfortable with playing around with settings/software/hardware.
Any help would be great.
Thanks again
Ozy
November 22nd, 2006 at 5:36 pm
Hi there,
I have the same problem as seen in Example 2.
What causes this problem?
And also, how much does it cost to change the lcd.
Is it worth getting a new laptop instead?
November 17th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Winston, I just came back to my Dell lapton and I have the exact same issue. with a 2 inch white bar on the side of my screen. I can move the cursor under the bar and do things, but I can’t make the bar go away. I have had my Dell Inspirion laptop since March 2005, not even two years. Is there an inexpensive fix?
November 16th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
hie there
i have an acer aspire 3002 nlc laptop, there are vertical lines apperaing on my lcd monitor, the external monitor shows no display when i try to connect to it.. plz let me know where lies the problem.. and is there any precautionary measures should be taken to avoid it.
November 16th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
Barbara,
I’ve never ever seen or heard about laptop screen overheating in sunlight. Probably I should sacrifice one of my laptops and leave it in the sun to see if I can reproduce the problem.
Sounds like a bad screen to me.
November 16th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
Hi!
I have a used ThinkPad T40. I’ve noticed that if direct sunlight hits the back of the screen (the cover), the screen gets multi-colored lines all over. The couple of times that my roommate left the computer in the sun, the lines would disappear after we’d let it cool down. I can only blame myself for this, but the other day I left the laptop near the window, and the sun attacked it once again. Now it’s been two days and many reboots, and I only get picture (on the top half of the screen) when I first turn the laptop on, then it goes to colored or grey lines. I haven’t found any info on the net about screens overheating in sunlight – but is this possible? Is something permanently fried, or can it be tweaked?
p.s. my previous older model ThinkPad never suffered in sunlight…
Thanks, I really appreciate any advice,
Barbara.
November 13th, 2006 at 11:47 pm
Max,
Believe me, you are not along. We’ve seen the same problem with this unit many times before, but usually our customers decline any repair because of unbelievably expensive video card.
November 11th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
I have an old 5105-S901 which, within a few minutes of running, shows an increasing amount of random pixel trash on the screen – similar to some of your screenshots (both on LCD and external monitor; shows as corrupted ASCII characters during boot-up). In 640×480 (safe mode) it works relatively stable for a while, but it crashes with ‘unknown hardware failure’ within minutes if it’s running in higher resolutions. After spending countless hours of testing, cleaning, replacing memory and experimenting, I found out that it’s a temperature issue with the video card. The Nvidia chip is getting extremely hot (burnt my finger twice) and if I spray liquid ice on it, the pixel trash immediately goes away. The video card has no active cooling, so I guess it became defective from permanent overheating over the years. I’m not quite sure what to do now – I can’t leave the laptop open all the time and spray stuff on it every 5 minutes. A new video card is ridiculously expensive ($350 – Walmart has a complete laptop for that price) and I wonder if and for how long it would solve the problem. I already force the CPU fan to run permantently at 100%, but that doesn’t help the video card. Is there a way to improve the video card’s cooling in my laptop model ? Have others experienced similar problems?