I’m quite glad to have stumbled upon this article because I’m currently having an issue. I turned on my IBM Thinkpad T43 laptop after it had a small fall (in my opinion at least) and it had all those funny northern lights lines like your first picture. However when I touch the screen I don’t have an outline of an image or anything. Is there other way to fix the screen without having to replace it entirely?

Connect an external monitor to the laptop and test external video. If external image is OK I assume this is not a problem with the motherboard.

You can try reseating the video cable on the back of the screen. Maybe it got loose. If reseating the cable doesn’t help, probably you’ll have to replace the screen. Most likely it got damaged.

When I turn the laptop on The normal boot windows seqence never happens on the screen. But you can just barely see on the top of the screen something that resembles window not booting. This is all hard to see through the verticle and horizontal lines. I tried torqing the screen with no change. I tried running a windows 7 boot disk but there is no reponse.

First of all I would test the laptop with an external monitor. Can you get normal image on the external screen or it also has lines?

My CQ50 laptop Lcd screen shows shows horizontal and verticle lines only. My external monitor output plug sends no signal

I don’t remember if you can switch Compaq Presario CQ50 laptop to the external monitor unless it’s booted Windows OS.
For proper diagnostics, it might be necessary to unplug the video cable from the motherboard and try turning it on with an external monitor after that.
Just in case, here’s Compaq Presario CQ50 laptop disassembly guide:
http://www.insidemylaptop.com/.....70-laptop/
The video cable connector on the motherboard shown in the step 10.

What happens when you turn on the laptop? Can you see normal hard drive activity at all? Maybe you can hear Windows boot sound?
What if you torque the screen a little bit, does it change image at all?

The display of my laptop has a problem. When I play any video, patches appear on the screen and the quality of video is very bad. But the images do not have any problem. Only videos. Let me know what the problem is and how to fix it.

Connect your laptop to an external monitor. Change the video output to the external monitor and start watching videos. Does external video has same problem?
If the same problem appears on both screens, the internal laptop screen and external monitor, most likely this is graphics card related failure.
Try cleaning the heatsink and cooling fan. Maybe it happens because of overheating.
If cleaning the laptop doesn’t help, I think the graphics card is going bad.

What can you do if the laptop LCD screen turned completely white?

First, I would test the laptop with an external monitor. Can you get image on the external monitor?

thanks, KK