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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April 1st, 2009 at 12:38 am
I want to express my graditude for your help manual!!
I got my used notebook as a gift 4 months ago.
It had just been to repair so it should have been fine!
But i got the same problem concerning the lcd screen turning white with some pastel rainbow stribes, just shortly after turning the notebook on. Turning the computer on and off was a habit in the end…always hoping that now it would stay clear for some time.
I googled the net for answeers but didnt find any untill i ran across your site.
So before i used alot of money on another repair where they prolly would ´ave replaced the lcd screen (goodbuy money) i tried to fix it myself.
And im a total newbie concerning laptops!!!
Well since the problem could be either the screen or the video cable i desided that I should try to give the video cable a go.
It was the video cable!!!! It looked connected when i got inside but i unplugged it and then plugged it again. I also nugged all plugs i saw with my screwdriver, just abit, to be sure.
I have used it for a whole day now (testing) and the lcd screen woooorks!!
So thank you !!!!!
You are in my favorites now!!!!
Best regards Soldis
March 31st, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Allen Jones,
Sounds like your new LCD screen is defective OR incompatible with the laptop.
Check if there is a newer BIOS version available for your laptop, try updating the latest version. It’s possible that your new screen is too new and Gateway added support for that screen with the BIOS update. Maybe the laptop cannot initialize the screen with the old BIOS installed. Just a guess.
March 31st, 2009 at 10:08 pm
koniichiewaa,
Is it cracked plastic or cracked hinges?
March 28th, 2009 at 6:08 am
got a problem I have a toshiba satellite laptop that has a crack in the screen case on the left near where the base of the screen is connected to the laptop. screen and everything else still works.
i really need your suggestions and please do help me… thanx!!!
God bless
February 16th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
I recently bought a Gateway MT6000 series notebook, with a cracked lcd. I found a replacement on ebay so I bought it for 57 dollars. Remove the old screen and install the new one. power up…nothing. Hook the notebook up to my desktop monitor and that works. So I hook up the broken lcd video cable and the new lcd backlight… the backlight works. and i get picture through the broken lcd. So now I hook the new lcd back up and still nothing…so I do the same thing again…hook up the old video cable with the new screens backlight hooked up. Broken screen video and new screens backlight turn on. I swap the video cable into the new screen while the backlight is on and it works until I reboot. I dont know what it could be, did it like 6 times and it worked each time until i reboot.
February 5th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Hello, I have a Tosiba P100 17 inch laptop. It has Nvidia Geforce 7600 Go Videocard. The LCD screen went black few days ago, but the laptop is in working condition, LCD are working , ect. Was anle to connect to external monitor via VGA port, got the picture, but it’s somewat corrupted, picture has a lot of pixellation. This is also repeated with another external LCD. DVI port is dead though. I dissasembled it to chek connections, the video cable connection seems to be tight… What seems to be the problem? If this is screen , why I have pixellation on external monitor? Is it a videocard? Is it a motherboard?
Thanks
February 4th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
mine presario v3000 screen have water then how?
use the same way as above to dry up?
February 2nd, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Cathy,
First of all, you’ll have to test your laptop with an external monitor. Do you have the same problem with the external video?
January 31st, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I have a Dell Inspirion B 120 and I am having some problems that I would love to have some assistance with; my screen when it is first turned on has a blueish green cloudy display ( almost like the appearance of alge) and then as the computer begins to boot up there are three lines of different colors, red, green, blue and then nothing happens or is atleast visible.
Could someone offer me some assistance? I will appreciate any input at this time since I will probaly have to do my own repair. Thank you.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
I have a dell inspiron 1100 that had a lcd problem of going dark except for a super faint image. I figured the backlight was bad, so until I could get another lcd screen from my spare 1100, I hooked up an external monitor and used it via the intel dual display clone. I changed the lcd’s out and rebooted and the problem remained but the screen on the external monitor showed an alert to input a password (even though it’s disabled at bios). I hit enter and and a message breifly flashed up saying something about factory settings and it started booting windows. When it got done booting, I started to go into the device manager to see if the monitor was ok and I started a driver update for the monitor. I noticed the battery light blinking orange constantly. I unplugged the charger and the alert came up that they battery was dead (even though it was fully charged) I pugged it back in and about 30 seconds later the lcd came on suddenly and I noticed the battery light was back to normal. I cancelled the driver update and went on my merry way. I have never had that happen before and I thought maybe it had to have time to check hardware or something weird like that. I unplugged battery while having the problem and replugged back in and that never solved anything and also the light wasn’t flashing either. What could the lag in lcd pwering on be? I’m happy it’s fixed, but I would really like to know what fixed it. Any help would be greatly appreciated!