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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February 28th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Troels Østeraa,
I’m not sure what’s causing that light leakage.
The backlight lamp is mounted inside the reflector. I’m removing the backlight lamp from the reflector on the picture 18. The reflector is attached to a 2 mm thick glass sheet and the light travels through that sheet. Apparently, in your case the reflector is not making good contact with the glass sheet on both sides. This is just a guess.
I don’t know. I’ve never done it myself.
February 28th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Hi,
I really appreciate that someone did put all this work into making these guide – compared to how many laptops are sold, there is going to be lots of need, and especially in the future with more dying CCFLs.
Question: What actually results in light leakage from the sides, i.e. why is black sometimes not homogenously black at the sides? From what i see in you dissassemblies, there are no reflectors or any sort in the sides or top, so where is this primary misallignment issue happening that makes these leakages occur?
Would it be possible to readjust by disassembling the LCD? This would seriously be a really interesting article i think
February 27th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Larry Fostano,
Hmmmm.., that’s a very strange failure. Sounds like a problem with the motherboard, but you experiencing the same problem with two different boards, apparently it’s not the board.
Did you test the power adapter? Make sure it outputs correct voltage.
Can you test the board outside the laptop case? All you need is motherboard, CPU, memory. Connect all together outside the laptop case, plug it the AC adapter and test again. Does it still fail?
February 27th, 2009 at 10:26 am
I have a question for you that I hope you can answer or help me with.I have a Gateway 7326GZ Laptop with wireless,3.06Ghz processor and 512 memory.I purchased this unit used,it had a problem with the dc power jack and made a repair to it.It worked for awhile but soon died again.I decided that enough was enough so I purchased a new motherboard online, when I installed it and applied power to it ,it seemed to work properly but then I noticed if I were to power down and then turn it back on from the power button it would not power up.Disgusted I removed all power , powered it up again 30 to 45 minutes later and it worked .This is still the case ,if I leave the batter in it it will not start either.I sent the board back and during the transit they sent me another board.nice people. I installed it and still have the same problem, any ideas? Please help
February 26th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Jeremy,
In some laptops the backlight will light up only when the video cable is plugged into the LCD screen. So, plug the video cable into the screen but do not connect the cable coming from the backlight lamp. Plug in the new backlight lamp instead. Will it light up this way.
There is an easier way to access files on the hard drive. Remove the hard drive and install it into an external USB enclosure ($10-20 in a local computer store). You’ll see an example here:
Accessing notebook hard drive using USB enclosure
After that connect this enclosure to any other working computer and the drive will pop up in My Computer. Access and back up all personal files.
February 25th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
This repair DOES work. but you need to work slowly and carefully…
Also on some LCDs (samsung for example) you can remove
the lamp without removing the header board first.. That makes it a whole lot easier and less risky.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:13 pm
First, this website is great. Very informative and having the pictures to walk through the process is great. Thanks for the help.
I had the famous flickering screen which ultimately left me with nothing visible on screen but visible with a flashlight. I’m able to use my TV’s S-video connection to see the computer, but I was trying to repair it myself. I started with the inverter, but that didn’t do anything. When I opened up the LCD screen to change the backlight bulb, I noticed that one of the wires that runs from the bulb into the inverter was completely charred and black. Obviously, I’m assuming this is the culprit behind my problem. I purchased a replacement lamp & wire harness off ebay (bad idea?) and was just testing it before I closed everything up, and was disappointed to see that the new bulb doesn’t light up either. I even tried my old inverter and had no luck. Any ideas what to do next?
My laptop is so old that I’m really just looking to salvage files off of the hard drive, but to complicate matters, I seem to have gotten a virus that won’t let me get past the loading of windows. (says something about RUNDLL Error “The specified module could not be found.) I was going to try and boot in safe mode, but I can’t see safe mode on my TV with the S-video connection. Doesn’t seem to work. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again!
February 18th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Tried it, purchased the lamp $14, disassembled LCD panel, unsolder-ed/re-soldered lamp, but while reassembling the sandwich the LCD fell apart and ripped a fragile ribbon cable, that became unrepairable… proving to me the whole repair process is worthless… The odds of a successful repair are 50/50 at best, which was my impression before beginning the repair process.
The FRU should be the LCD panel assembly. If Dell will not sell it as a FRU, then phuck Dell, I’ll purchase future laptops from another vendor…
Of all our Laptops at our small company, I’ve had three different Dell laptop that have lamp failures vs. none from laptops purchased from Sony, HP & Toshiba. Currently Dell’s QC of Laptops & Desktop has nosed dived… Dell is no longer my current computer vendor…
February 12th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
hey, im haveing problems becuase i was trying to charge my laptop and i dropped it and busted the part you charge the laptop at how would I fix that?
February 9th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Question:
I have a HP Pavilion zv 6000
my back light comes on for 1 min and statrs to flashing off & on then goes dark. Does a replacement LCD screen come with the back light built in it ? Wll this fix the problem? Replacing the LCD screen looks less complicated.
Thanks
KG