How I took apart and repaired my notebook LCD screen with water damage
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.
Entry Filed under: LCD Screen Repair
236 Responses to “How I took apart and repaired my notebook LCD screen with water damage”
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Pages: « 24 … 21 20 19 18 17 [16] 15 14 13 12 11 … 1 » Show All
January 5th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Jack Slater,
The best way would be opening up the display panel and taking a look on the back of the LCD screen. On the back of the screen you can find the manufacturer information, part number and other useful information. This information will help you to find the correct replacement.
It’s possible that all 5 models will work fine with the same video cable but you never know.
January 5th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Darrell,
If you get the same problem with two different LCDs and video cables, there must be something wrong with the motherboard. I don’t know what else could be wrong. The video cable plugs directly into the motherboard or it plugs into the video card? Maybe something is wrong with the video card? Try reseating the video card if it’s a separate module in your laptop.
Even though video on the external monitor works fine, the problem still could be related to the motherboard. Apparently the video signal has two different paths for external and internal screens.
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:31 pm
CJ600 and other Admins/Experts,
Thanks for the great site and detailed information.
I have a toshiba L25-S1193 with a solid white screen. Do not see any faint images. External Monitor works fine. Fn+F5 is not switching between external/internal but Fn+F6,F7 does change the brightness display of internal. Pressing LCD close switch turns ON/OFF the display as expected.
Opened the LCD display, reseated Video cable on back of LCD panel and motherboard. No effect.
As has been mentioned before inverter, motherboard, video card should not be problem since internal display is bright and external monitors shows everything.
That leaves me with bad video cable, LCD panel. Any way to check these? Which one should I replace first OR is it even worth it?
Thanks in advance,
PA
January 1st, 2008 at 4:16 am
Hi this is my second post, I have an Acer Aspire 1691 notebook. The LCD panel has 4 horizontal dead lines. I downloaded the service manual, to see what is the lcd panel model to buy for repair. But I have noticed that there are 5 different models of lcd panel to choose. How can I do to know which is the right model to choose?
Here’s the manual: http://www.frc-tech.com/docs/manuals/SG/acer/S.G_AS1690_AS3510_BOOK.pdf
The page I refer is page 115 of the document (page 122 of the pdf file).
Can somebody help me? Thanks
Jack Slater
December 31st, 2007 at 9:43 pm
I had a Toshiba A55-S306 display go bad and through your site was able to comfortably diagnose the problem as the LCD itself and than install a new one I ordered from Smart-Micro USA. Without your web site, it would have been much more difficult and scary to dig into the machine.
THANKS !!!!
DRS
December 30th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
cj2600 - thanks for replying and trying to help. It’s much appreciated. The image is distorted long before Windows boots, i.e. it’s present in BIOS. I ruled out driver/software issues by connecting an external monitor and seeing the display image fine… in BIOS, then Windows, & then UBCD4Win. However, when connected to two different internal LCD’s with different internal video cables, the image shows 4 times… perfect representations of the image I should be seeing yet shown in 4 small versions with a blank “+” shape between them. Any other thoughts? Anyone? I took a can of air to the connectors also and that didn’t fix the problem. Click on my name to see how the problem looks.
December 30th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
I swapped the LCD from my HP 14.1 laptop to my Dell 14.1 laptop.
LG makes almost all LCD screens so if the size is the same and your screen lights up fine, then yer good to go.
As long as the inverter on the laptop you want to keep is good, you should be able to swap the screens. The screws were the same, and the data cable was the same, but the inverter needs to stay with the laptop. The cable from the inverter to the screen was the same.
I had an issue with the screen being solid white. I diagnosed it to a grounding problem with the inverter. Some inverters ground to the laptop frame, some don’t. Make sure you ground everything to the frame that was grounded before. Look for silver colored areas of the circuit board that touch the frame. Or copper colored areas too.
Took a long time diagnosing, but the faster working laptop has the good screen, and the older and junk laptop is still old and junk. Everything else but the screen had broken and I saved $300 for a new LCD for the fast laptop.
Blessings!
December 29th, 2007 at 1:43 am
MY Laptop display appear many line, the line colour red, blue green and some dot dot line.
May I ask what is problem?
December 27th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Allende,
Maybe the laptop video output somehow got stuck in the external mode, trying to display on the external screen? Try switching from external to internal mode. Fn+F5 for Toshibas, Fn+F8 dell, Fn+F7 IBM, etc…
Try reconnecting the video cable on the motherboard, could be bad connection.
Check the BIOS, maybe there are some settings for the primary monitor. Set the laptop LCD as a primary screen.
Try replacing the video cable.
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.