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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September 19th, 2009 at 7:28 am
No offense, but some of you should leave this repair to the pros.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:43 am
Hi,
I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart! I saved myself over $300 in repair costs on my HP MX3560 Laptop. I purchased the lamp on ebay, and received it 3 days after payment. I pulled this page up and followed it step by step.
I just want to say that this is very tedious work. If you do not have a quiet place to work with a lot of patience please do not atempt until you do. My lamp was an exact match but the little silicone boots that cover the soldering were larger than my original. After carefully trimming then down to size I had no problem putting it all back together.
Good luck to everyone. If you get frustrated just take a break and come back. You will be a lot more focused.
August 30th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
[...] can try replacing just the backlight lamp without replacing the screen, but it’s not easy and should be done only by an experienced [...]
August 13th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
hi, you were right about the resonance, spot-on – it turned out that the lightbulb i was fitting didn’t have o-rings on it (why the hell would they sell it like that? =/), so getting a new, proper one (with cables and plug) fixed the problem. and well, i was all cheery and all, re-assembled everything only to eventually discover that the screen wouldn’t light up again, most likely due to what seems to be an inverter failure =(. it never ends! i think i’ve lost my patience and gonna follow your advice about buying a new screen, cause all this screwing/unscrewing/fitting/taping and all has already cost me so much time i really don’t won’t to risk losing any more playing around with those components. eh.
August 9th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
jacopucci,
I’m puzzled too. I’m not sure, is it some kind of resonance buzz? Maybe the backlight lamp doesn’t fit into the reflector as it should and it’s touching the reflector?
You might consider buying a brand new LCD screen. You can find it here for less than $80.
August 9th, 2009 at 8:08 am
cj2600,
thanks for your reply, i really appreciate it.
i tried changing brightness levels, but the buzz persisted, changed its tone slightly but at a constant volume.
so i opened the display once again and had another close look at what’s going on inside. i took everything apart up to the point of having a bare lightbulb connected to inverter. at that point, the lightbulb was silent and the inverter was buzzing quietly (it was not the noise that i was looking for, definitely), which i suppose is a normal thing. i started re-assembling the screen, turning the computer on after every step and it turns out that the lightbulb starts buzzing only after i place it in the reflector. btw, the solders are well isolated with caps and tape.
i’m rather puzzled now – what would you make of it? would it be just a matter of fitting the bulb in the reflector? would you be able to give any tips on that, as i have no clue what might have gone wrong?
re computer slowdown, maybe you’re right – it might just be subjective perception (hadn’t used the laptop for a while, so maybe i forgot how slow it was in the first place, lol).
also, i’ll try and dig up the parameters of the inverter and the lightbulb – still, when i was ordering the lightbulb from sparesweb.com, it said that the voltage is dependent on length alone and differences between 2-10mm were irrelevant (the ratio is roughly 1w per 100mm).
cheers
August 8th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
jacopucci,
What if you disconnect the video cable from the motherboard and turn on the laptop with an external monitor? Disconnecting the cable will eliminate the display.
If you are getting the same high pitched noise when the display is disconnected, it’s not related to the backlight lamp replacement.
What if you reduce the LCD screen brightness? Will the high-pitched noise go away?
I really doubt that this is related to the backlight lamp replacement. At least I don’t know who these two issues can be connected to each other.
Maybe the backlight lamp is not compatible with the inverter somehow and drawing too much power creating the noise. This is just a guess.
As I said, try reducing the screen brightness and see if the noise goes away.
August 5th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
hi everyone,
i’m having an issue with my fujitsu siemens v3505. basically, the thing was dropped and the backlight lightbulb got smashed. i managed to replace the backlight (HUGE kudos to cj2600) and i suppose i re-assembled it correctly. however, even though the screen works fine now, i’m getting a constant, high-pitched noise coming from the lcd inverter/reflector area (regardless of whether the laptop is plugged in or runs on battery) and the computer slowed down, slightly but noticeably. now, i have no idea what might be the issue – btw, the replacement lightbulb is roughly the same size and circumference as the original one (a few millimetres longer, if anything). would anyone have any ideas as to what to look at/check etc? i’d be really grateful.
cheers
August 4th, 2009 at 7:03 am
Thanks a ton! I’ve repaired my old Thinkpad T42p yesterday. But for your manual, I don’t think I would ever dare to go that deep.
There are a couple of problems (which have nothing to do with this post), but maye sharing my experience will be helpful for others.
Well, now the screen is kind of blueish/greenish, which I believe is due to poor quality of the lamp itself. I mean it’s temperature is not the same as the original lamp used to have when it was new. So I adjusted screen color settings and now everything looks pretty. Maybe that’ll change over the time. We’ll see. Luckily it’s adjustable. I am not going to edit photoes professionally or anything, so… works for me.
It also seems that I slightly damaged the screen – it now has some very faint blotchiness, size of a quarter, in one part of the screen, but you really have to know where it is to be able to see it.
I also lost 1 screw, although I tried to clean up the area before unscrewing anything. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any spare ones, as I do this kind of repairs maybe once every 3 years. But without this screw, it’ll be fine, I’m sure.
All-in-all, my T(erminator) is alive again and that’s pretty cool!
July 31st, 2009 at 1:01 am
Hi
I have Lenovo 3000 n100 Laptop and my screen was just working fine but one day it was like black, and I just can see a very very very hard to see ghost image on lcd, but when the computer starts it glows fully and in between when I press the Function + f7 key to toggle between LCD and Monitor(which I have connected to laptop for my work) it glows up and in few seconds go away. I am not facing any red tint or hue. what can be the problem??
My external monitor works great with laptop.
I am not gtting what can be the problem. please advise me
Thanks