Yesterday took apart and repaired my notebook LCD screen with water damage. The screen itself was working just fine but it had two different problems.
- previous owner spilled water on the laptop. Somehow the water got inside the LCD screen and left stains inside the screen. The water marks were very noticeable on a white background and it was very irritating.
- the screen also had dust and lint inside also very noticeable on a white background. I have no idea how it got in there but I decided to clean it up too.
To fix both problems I had to open up the LCD screen. This was my first experience on opening a notebook screen. I was pretty confident because I didn’t really care if I break the screen, I just wanted to know if it’s possible to fix it.
Warning: the LCD screen can be easily damaged if you open it up. If you do something wrong the screen might become completely unusable and you’ll have to buy a new screen. It’s very expensive. Think twice before you decide opening the screen. Continue at your own risk.
Here’s my Dell Latitude D610 notebook with water damaged screen I’m going to take apart.
First of all remove the battery from the notebook.
Lift up rubber screw seals and remove all screws.
Carefully separate the screen bezel from the LCD cover and remove the bezel.
Remove two screws from the front and two screws from both sides.
Carefully remove the LCD screen from the cover and place it on the notebook base. Disconnect the video cable and the inverter board cable.
On this model the inverter board is attached to the screen with two screws. Remove both screws, disconnect the screen cable and remove the inverter board.
Carefully peel off sticky tape and foil and put it aside. You’ll have to put it back in place during the screen reassembly.
Remove two screws from both sides of the screen.
Carefully place the screen upside down on a flat surface. Carefully unglue the film that covers the circuit board and remove two screws from the board (top circles). I wasn’t really sure if I have to remove screws on the bottom, so I removed them just in case. Do not touch the circuit board with fingers.
After both screws are removed you should be able to lift up the circuit board. Be careful, it’s still attached to the LCD.
Start unsnapping the metal frame from the screen. There are a lot of latches on all sides of the screen. You can unlock them with nails or a small flathead screwdriver.
After all latches are opened you should be able to separate the screen into three pieces: metal frame, LCD and background (not sure about correct technical name).
If you have lint or dust inside the screen, probably you’ll find it between the LCD and the background. Do not touch LCD or background with your fingers. I was able to remove dust and lint up with a very soft cloth, barely touching the LCD and background surfaces.
After I split the screen I found that the background has a few some kind of optical layers (three transparent sheets) and in my case they were damaged by water. The water dried out and left stains between these optical layers.
In my case removing dust and lint wasn’t enough and I had to go further.
Very carefully separate the LCD with attached circuit board from the background.
To remove damaged optical layers it’s necessary to remove metal locks on both sides of the screen. It’s like a small clip that keeps layers in place.
After I removed both clips, I was able to look between the layers. At first I tried to clean up the dried water marks with a soft cloth but it didn’t help. The stains were still visible and didn’t want to go away.
Fortunately I had another similar screen laying around, it had a cracked LCD. I decided to borrow the optical layers from the cracked screen and transfer them to my screen. I wasn’t sure if it’s going to work, but as I mentioned before I didn’t really care if I break the screen. It was just an experiment.
So I disassembled the cracked screen and carefully transfered the white background and all transparent layers to my screen.
After that I assembled my screen back removing dust and lint with a very soft cloth. Breathlessly connected my new screen to the notebook. Turned it on and…
That’s a miracle, it works!
No dust, no lint, no water mars inside the screen! It’s clear and the background is absolutely clean!
My donor screen had a cracked LCD but it had a good working backlight tube. The backlght tube is very fragile and it’s located inside a metal casing. I didn’t remove the backlight tube, I just broke off the entire metal casing from the plastic frame. I’m going to use this backlight tube for testing purposes.
If you fixing a Dell laptop yourself, probably you’ll need a service manual. Some Dell service manuals provide step-by-step laptop disassembly instructions.
Are you looking for a new screen? You can find very inexpensive brand new LCD screens here, just search for your laptop model.
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February 20th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Hi,
I have a Toshiba M100 which is otherwise in great shape but has a problem with the LCD. If you look directly at the screen you can see dark grey spots scattered around the screen. To me this looks like mould or some sort of dirt and it’s definitely on the inside of the screen. So basically, the LCD is dirty on the inside!
To make the story worse, a friend of mine also bought the same laptop from the same source (private seller, used laptop, no warranty) and it also has the same spots. When I was buying the laptop I figured the screen was just plain dirty and I could wipe it off. But it turns out it’s not and the spots are driving me nuts.
Do you know whether or not it would be possible to open the screen and clean the LCD panel? I figure it’s the top glass layer but then again, I could be wrong.
Thanks in advance.
Greetings from Slovenia!
Bojan
February 19th, 2007 at 11:46 am
This is exactly what I need. I have damage on the monitor of my Sony VAIO. However, what do we do if we don’t have or know how to find these layers?
February 19th, 2007 at 7:32 am
I have a Tecra S3 which is only a year old, just out of warranty. The display just started to have problems mainly with the color red. Little red dots appeared everywhere and the color red had blotches of crappiness in it. Toshiba told me my warranty was over, I figured I’d try to fix it myself. I determined the problem comes from a weak plug in the display
panel itself. I removed the rubber bumpers at the top and the flat plastic covers near the bottom, and all four screws.
Then I carefully removed the plastic cover by inching it up with my fingers. There were two screws near the bottom of the panel that needed to be removed, and a high voltage plug with white & pink wires that will pull out of a circuit board
near the bottom of the housing. I then pulled up the display & saw the long data cable & plug going into the top of the
display. I pulled this and determined it is made of copper. I took a can of Radio Shack contact cleaner, and sprayed both
the cable and the plug on the top of the display. Just for good measure, I sprayed a light coating on the board under the
plastic cover as well. I replaced everything, and now my display works perfectly. If you have a similar display problem
crop up, you might want to give this a shot, it can’t hurt anything. Always be extra careful with the front of the
display, they scratch very easily.
-Chris
February 17th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Thanx, a mil! We will follow your leadership and try to fix an HP pavilion dv1000 blacked-out screen. I will let you know how it goes. Bye!
February 16th, 2007 at 4:23 am
thanks so much for your help. i did it …. and it worked on my 28 day old Acer that i spilled water on
February 15th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
thank you very much my laptop was really messed up. i took it apart then played with the clip and now it is like brand new. you saved me some money
February 11th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
[...] I have no idea how the inverter board can cause this problem. LCD inverter acts like a power supply for the backlight bulb, it converts low voltage DC power into high voltage AC power. When the inverter board goes bad you lose the backlight but to the best of my knowledge a failed inverter board cannot cause vertical stripes on the screen. Motherboard problem? Possible but I doubt it because the external monitor works fine. When you have a faulty video card the same defect usually appears on both internal LCD and external monitor. Sometimes you can get it to work by closing and opening the display. When you open or close the display you flexing the video cable. It’s possible the vertical stripes appear because of a loose connection somewhere inside the display assembly. [...]
February 11th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Dietrich,
When I was fixing my screen I just removed all layers from the old screen and transferred them in the same order into the new screen. I didn’t pay attention how the layers were positioned.
February 11th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
hi
I’m trying to replace the optical layers of my old Dell Inspiron 5100 from an old lcd screen. The question is. in which order should the optical layers be positioned??
Thanks
February 6th, 2007 at 4:55 am
hi
this is unbelieveble site, i got many helps from this site,
thanks a llot