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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December 27th, 2007 at 11:41 am
I solved a video problem with my Compaq Evo N610C .
On boot the LCD screen would showthe Compaq logo and “F10=setup” for 3 seconds, then go to black with no faint images or anything wer to be seen. An external monitor would however display the normal XP boot sequence and login screen etc.
The problem was the “lid closed switch” was keeping the LCD turned off, except for the first 3 seconds after power up so you could see the F10 message. This switch is inside a recessed whole at the front edge of the keyboard, where the latch hooks engage. The switch is under the left hole.
Had to disassemble the whole laptop to get to fix a thin copper actuator arm that presses on the lid closed switch on the mother board when the latch hook is in the hole. Had to break away a plastic “melt post” type mount for the copper piece, and straighten the copper out so it wouldnt continuously press the lid closed switch. Replace the copper and remelt the post or use epoxy to hold it in place.
Many problems are just mechanical in nature. Be careful always with the internals of any laptop, camera, video recorder, etc. There are so many ways to break parts that were’nt broken before, simply by not knowing how to properly open a device case. Use common sense and don’t force parts, they’ll probably break.
December 27th, 2007 at 4:42 am
I have a laptop with no image at all in the lcd display. The external video works perfectly. I understand that when the inverter or the backlight are bad you still have a very dimmed image, I’ve seen it, but in this case I have NOTHING.
I tried the inverter with a working backlight anyway and it didn’t light, as expected.
What else can be?
Thanks.
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Jack Francis,
You said the screen turns black after a few minutes. Does it mean that it works fine for a while?
Is it completely black or you can see a very faint image on the screen?
What was the original problem with your screen, why did you replace it?
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Darrel,
What if you boot the laptop is Safe Mode? Do you get the same image even in safe mode?
Did you try playing with the screen resolution, try setting it to 800×600.
Just in case try uninstalling the video driver and running the laptop just with basic Windows driver.
December 21st, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Hey man. I did this I got everything out and fine. Although you know how their is those 4 plastic pieces of paper I’m preaty sure are the LCD part of it. Well i got the water damage on that and I was wondering if you knew any where where i could get a replacement for that? I got a gateway. Tried calling gateway they just hung up on me saying I shouldn’t have opened up my laptop.
December 20th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
I replace an LCD on my laptop, When I power it on, the screen turns Balck after few minutes, the laptop stays on and it is not the Power saver function that is turning it black. By mistake I did touch the “white tape” anyone can tell me what to do. Thanks a lot.
December 20th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
I’m reposting this question because I never received a response and still have the same problem after swapping different video cables, inverters, and LCD’s. Again, external monitors show the image once but internal LCD’s show the one screen image 4 times. See photo at this link:
Disregard the blurry picture. That’s my lack of photography skills. Instead, please tell me what’s making any LCD I connect to this laptop display images (including BIOS screen) 4 times. Despite the bad photography, the 4 images are perfect representations of the 1 image that is supposed to be seen on the display, i.e. no blurriness or dimness. External monitors show the 1 image perfectly.
December 12th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Nevermind. I got it. The trick is to push the bezel outward by prying with your fingers under the inside edge. One you get one side started the rest is easier. I broke a clip off in the process of doing this. It took more force than I was comfortable applying to a $1500 laptop!
December 12th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
I followed the instructions for my Latitude 620, which has the exact same screw pattern, but the bezel does not want to come free. I’ve tried to pry it in every direction but it seems like it’s still mounted solidly. Anybody else run into this problem?
December 10th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
On my previous comment, it basically looks like example 5 on this page, except turn it 90deg clockwise
http://www.laptoprepair101.com.....cd-screen/