In this guide I will disassemble a laptop LCD screen in order to remove and replace the backlight lamp (CCFL).
Replacing the backlight lamp is not an easy task even for experienced technicians. If you do something wrong you will permanently damage the LCD screen and have to buy a new one. Proceed on your own risk and do not blame me. 
Some recommendations before you start:
1. Work in a clean room. You don’t want dust and lint inside your LCD screen.
2. Make notes, so you know how to assemble your screen back.
3. Take pictures.
4. Before you remove something, take a closer look at the part and memorize how it is assembled.
5. When you are assembling the screen, remove dust and lint with compressed air. Do not use cloth.
The backlight lamp (CCFL) is located inside the LCD screen, so we are going to take it apart. In this article I’m not going to explain how to remove LCD from a laptop, it’s been covered before.
Here some examples:
Removing LCD screen from a Dell laptop.
Taking apart IBM ThinkPad display panel.
Removing screen from Toshiba laptops.
Remove sticky tape and foil from the back of the screen and glue it somewhere so you can reuse it later, when you assemble the screen.
Removing tape from the backlight cables.
On my screen the green circuit board was glued to the plastic frame with a double sided tape. Carefully unglue the circuit board. Be very careful, do not flex or bend the circuit board.
The circuit board has been unglued.
Place the LCD screen on the side and start removing the metal frame witch secures the LCD to the plastic frame. There will be many latches on all sides of the frame, you can unlock them with a small screwdriver.
Continue separating the metal frame from the plastic base.
On the following picture you can see that frame, LCD with the circuit board and screen base have been separated. Be careful, do not touch internal components with your fingers. Handle all internal components by the sides.
Place the metal frame and LCD with the circuit board aside. You’ll need them only when you assemble everything back together.
There will be a few transparent layers inside. Carefully remove them from the screen base. Do not separate the layers, just put them aside together.
Keep everything organized, so you have no trouble assembling the screen.
Start removing the metal cover from the backlight lamp (CCFL).
The backlight cover has been removed.
The backlight lamp (CCFL) cables are routed through small plastic hooks.
Unroute the backlight lamp cables.
Now probably the hardest part in this disassembly process – removing the backlight lamp and reflector. The backlight lamp is secured inside the reflector so you have to remove both and then separate them.
Before you remove the backlight lamp and reflector take a closer look how it’s assembled and mounted to the screen base. Fitting the backlight and reflector back in place could be a very challenging task.
The reflector is glued to the screen base with a double sided tape.
After the reflector has been unattached from the screen base, you can start removing the backlight lamp. As you see on the picture, I marked the left side of the reflector with a red dot so I know where the red cable goes when I assemble everything back together.
The backlight lamp (CCFL) has been removed from the reflector.
In order to access the backlight lamp leads you’ll have to remove the rubber caps from both side of the lamp. I’m not sure if you can touch the backlight lamp with your fingers, so I would use rubber gloves.
Cabled on both sides of the backlight lamp are soldered to the backlight leads. In order to access the leads you’ll have to remove the black insulator on both side of the lamp.
Unsolder both cables from the old backlight lamp and solder them to a new one.
You can test the new backlight lamp (CCFL) before you install it back into the screen. Connect the backlight lamp into the inverter board and turn on the laptop. The backlight lamp should light up.
From my experience, on some laptops the backlight lamp will not light up until the video cable is connected to the LCD screen. In this case you’ll have to assemble the LCD screen and then test it.
You can search for a new CCFL backlight lamp here.
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June 4th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I replaced the whole screen and it is still dark… i can faintly see the image but the inverter is not lighting up the back light… i am guessing there is a problem with the board… can this be fixed? whats going on? any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.. thanks
June 1st, 2009 at 8:37 am
thanks very much for puting this information on the web
i new my backlight was faulty but didnot know how to take the screen apart
so i went on the web
and typed laptop backlight help
and to my suprise found your help
computer working great
thanks many thanks
May 21st, 2009 at 12:04 pm
MOHAMMED NAGDEE,
I guess you’ll have to replace the whole screen.
May 21st, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Hello.
Thanks for the great tutorial. I noticed that you dismantle the entire lcd itself. My lcd works perfectly fine except that i have a crack that seems to be on the outermost layer which i think is called a polarizing filter. Is there anywhere that i may get a replacement for a vaio FZ11Z?
Many Thanks
May 21st, 2009 at 3:03 am
arrrgghhh… I took my tosh satellite sp10-304 to bits to try and fix a problem with the wireless switch and when i put it back together it would not work so dismantled it again to make sure that all was connected properly and yes call me stupid but somehow the processor was not seated correctly and a couple of pins were bent… I straightened these out and seated it and put the laptop back together. all worked apart from screen was really dark – ok so i thought new inverter – £15 off eBay and it still did not fix it – ok so I thought back light – took a m40x equium to bits and tested the light on the sp10-304 – not working – so I think ok I either have 3 inverters and 2 back lights that don’t work or something else is wrong.
I tested all three inverters and one backlight on another laptop and all is fine so I am now guessing I need a new graphics cable for a tosh satellite sp10-304 as I believe that there is nothing going from the MB to the inverter and as it states some backlights will not work unless the graphics cables are connected… or would it be something else?
May 16th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Thank you. This tutorial was a huge help. I was working on a friends laptop that had a screen with heavy damage (imagine a laptop that looked like it had been hit with a baseball bat) but lit up just fine. I had a replacement screen that was in perfect shape, but was really dim. Using this I was able to switch the backlights and get his computer working.
May 14th, 2009 at 6:09 am
Any idea how you would replace a led backlit screen?
May 10th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
hi,
may i ask how can i determine which part of the lcd that must be replaced? Actually, the screen is a bit faded and cannot show jpeg files clearly (right now its like viewing negatives from a film) BUT surprisingly, I can still use it for emails and other written stuffs.
Any idea what part that needs to be replaced? I’ve asked a technician about it but said I have to replace the lcd already which would cost me. And in addition, I dont trust any technician these days…
Btw, Im using an ASUS x51r with a defective lcd right now. and can still read things well except in viewing photos.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
[...] Replacing a CCFL seems very complicated while replacing the LCD inverter is trivial, at least on this particular ThinkPad model. According to Google the most common cause of backlight problems is the inverter. To confirm that this was the case I ripped the LCD panel out of my old ThinkPad A20m and connected it to the inverter in the R32. I figured that if the R32’s CCFL was broken the A20m’s LCD panel would light up when I plugged it in. It didn’t light up but I did see the same very dark Thinkpad logo during the BIOS initalization so I concluded that the inverter was the problem. After a quick search on EBay I found a new inverter for $30 including shipping to Sweden. The disassembled ThinkPad A20m (left) and R32 (right) The inverter is located below the panel The new inverter [...]
April 30th, 2009 at 8:08 am
I have a Gateway 7330GZ, sometimes my screen goes out when I am using it. Then if I move screen it will come on, sometimes I have to find just the right position to keep it on. Could this be something loose, broken wire or dirt? Thanks Steve