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 … 23 22 21 20 19 [18] 17 16 15 14 13 … 1 » Show All
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:41 pm
What is the average cost of a Toshiba Satellite laptop? Do you recommend I change the LCD screen? My computer had the same symptoms as your models. I had to “wack it” a few times to make it work. Now, I am afraid to close it or even move it .
What do you suggest?
Cheers,
Charles
January 31st, 2008 at 9:55 pm
krye,
the screen works sometimes when you wiggle the inverter while it’s still disconnected from the LCD chassis, right? I assume, if it works occasionally, then it’s not necessary to ground the inverter board to the LCD chassis.
I’ve seen inverters attached to the LCD chassis only on Dell laptops, on all other laptops inverters are mounted separately. I think it’s not mandatory grounding inverter to the LCD chassis.
sounds like either loose connection or bad ribbon cable.
January 31st, 2008 at 12:22 pm
I took apart a Dell Inspirion 4150 and mounted all the parts into a new enclosure to make a digital picture frame. It worked great. I since found a smaller enclosure and moved the guts into the new case. In order to get the LCD to fit, I unscrewed the inverter from the LCD and tapped it to the back of the display. Now the LCD doesn’t always get power. If I wiggle the inverter around I can sometimes get it to work. I tried a spare inverter that I had and I get the same results.
Bottom line: Does the inverter have to be grounded to the LCD chassis to work? Or do I have a bad ribbon cable now?
Thanks
January 27th, 2008 at 11:11 am
damo,
It’s possible that both screens are compatible but they require different video cables. Find out if you need a different cable for your new screen.
Test the laptop with an external monitor. If there is something wrong with the BIOS you’ll get the same 2×2 image on the external screen. I don’t think this problem is related to the BIOS.
January 27th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Osmium,
Thank you. I’ve seen this site before. Some lazy stinking rats copy my sites all the time. These stupid idiots don’t know that Google and other search engines penalize sites with duplicate content and creating sites like this is just waste of time.
January 24th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Some guy ripped off your page, paraphrased some of the text in bad english, and tried to cover the watermark logos on the photos. He didn’t give any credit to you, phooey!
notebookrepairs.blogspot.com
January 24th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Hi, I’ve got a big problem with a replacement LCD that you may be able to diagnose. I replaced a Philips LP154W01 with a supposedly compatible AUO B154EW01 panel and when I switched on, 4 images instead of 1, as if I had 4 screens in a 2×2 formation. I put the old panel back with the laptop running, and same problem. I rebooted and was back to a single image. Changed the panel to the new one again and everything was ok. Rebooted and back to 4 images. This is at POST on rebooting, so I’m guessing a BIOS problem. I haven’t tried flashing the BIOS, I thought I’d try for some suggestions first!
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:38 pm
How to clean the translucent diffusion sheets:
Hi, I have an Acer Aspire 3050 notebook, which had a dirty screen (on the outside). I used a wet sponge with liquid dish detergent to clean it. I cleaned it very well, but when I turned it on, there was a surreal pattern like criss-crossing diagonal crystals. It was very beautiful; but I wish it was a picture on the wall, not on my LCD screen! It was from a drop of soapy water that seeped into the screen and onto the translucent diffusion sheets. F#u@c%k!
So I took it apart as per your excellent instructions and pictures here. I found out that the two sheets are engraved with very fine parallel grooves in a diagonal orientation. The grooves seem to act as light channels to diffuse the light evenly across the screen. The sheets are very difficult to clean. After many trials, the screen looked acceptable by cleaning the sheets like this:
1. Clean a kitchen sink or tray very well and rinse with distilled water.
2. Place the sheet in the sink grooved side up, and apply distilled water on it.
3. Brush with a clean, fine paintbrush in the direction of the grooves, then brush the shiny backside.
4. Rinse with distilled water.
5. Shake the sheet, then place it on clean inkjet printer paper sheets, grooved side down, and press all over the shiny side with clean fingers to soak up most of the water into the paper.
6. Rinse and shake the paintbrush to get most of the water off of it.
7. Turn the sheet around and use the paintbrush to spread the remaining water evenly in the direction of the grooves. Let dry.
8. Turn the sheet around again and wipe the shiny side with a lint-free cloth.
It’s true that it’s hard not to get dust in there when you’ve got it apart, but after a brushing the sheets and the glass LCD screen, it should be unnoticeable unless you really look hard for imperfections. Good luck and be proud you repaired it yourself!
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:08 pm
knowelus,
Sounds like a problem with the LCD screen. I had to repair laptops with similar problems two or three times before. In my cases I had to replace LCDs.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Juan Carlos,
Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell what is wrong without testing the laptop with another working LCD screen>
I’m not familiar with this model but most likely the video card (I guess you called it display card) is integrated into the motherboard. You mentioned that the external video is fine, so most likely the motherboard/video card works fine.
I think you have a problem withe the LCD screen. You can try reseating connections on both end of the video cable, on the motherboard and on the back of the LCD screen. Just unplug the cable from the connector on the motherboard/LCD and then plug it back in. Just to make sure this is not a connection problem.