LCD display broken? Anyone recognize the symptoms?
Asked by
nisse (
1986
)
January 5th, 2010
My laptop LCD display just went all wierd, it looks sort of like I took the whole screen and did a photoshop rasterized downconversion to 16 colors (everything is rasterized and the colors are burning, same thing over the entire screen).
It happened suddenly without any obvious interaction done by me, when watching a video online with the computer on my lap. The gpu has always been running somewhat hot (65–80 deg C), and i’m a bit concerned it might have burned out – although it’s still running.
The graphics settings are at 1280×800 and 32-bit color, i’ve tried the following:
– letting the computer rest and cool down – no difference.
– updating the graphics drivers – made a difference for 30 seconds, then reverted to wierdness.
– changing resolution and color depth – no difference.
Am i screwed here? Warranty is long gone unfortunately so I am a bit keen on fixing it myself if possible.
Anyone recognize the symptoms? I’ve heard of dead pixels and broken LCD screens from physical destruction, but never seen anything like this.
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10 Answers
This happened to my boyfriends laptop, exactly the same. It was the light behind it that has gone, it’s a bit fiddly to mend yourself but it’s just the light. I’m not sure the exact name for it. I’ll ask him when he gets home and get back to you, unless you know I mean.
Please ask him for the specifics so i can do further reasearch on how to fix it, right now i can’t google it as i don’t know what the condition is called. Would be very nice, thanks in advance.
@nisse Ok, he’ll be home in a few hours.
I did some research on LCD backlight faliure, and i’m not 100% convinced the symptoms are right. Most of the symptoms for that seemed to include the screen flickering to black, going entirely black or white, dimming or getting stripes.
Please note that the display is not dimmed or darkened in any way, the luminosity is still what it used to be. The colors are just shifted and seems 16-color’ish rasterized. Looks somewhat like this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Dithering_example_dithered_16color.png
Also if I go to this page: http://www.techmind.org/lcd/phasing.html which should be a 1×1 black/white checkerboard pixel grid, the page looks entirely black. So i am inclined to think it has something to do with the timing.
Please ask your friend if his screen with backlight faliure got dimmed or not.
Hi, I was wrong sorry. He can’t remember what it was called but it was something like the Transformers or something? He said it was a completely different problem to yours. Sorry for wasting your time.
No problem, thanks for trying. :) Anyone else?
Not that I know of. Isn’t there a shop you can take it to?
I don’t know of one. It’s an HP so i’ll try to contact them for support even though it’s out of warranty. I suspect it will be expensive :P.
Hmm, that sounds very strange. I’m tempted to say that since updating drivers changed it, if only briefly, that it may be the graphics card. This sounds like a very complex change, not just something like a light busting, so I’m thinking your graphics processor may have bit it. Which would be good for you, since a decent one is probably less expensive then a typical decent-sized monitor.
Most computers, at least desktops, have an integrated graphics controller of some kind, just a generic monitor plug that jacks directly to the motherboard (usually near the top of the case, while graphics card input is usually near the bottom). I’d say try plugging into that, and seeing what happens. A better way would also be to ask a friend with a laptop or conveniently located desktop to hook up your monitor and test it. Then you can be sure which component it is.
Once you’ve got that, I’d say replacement is the best option.
Good luck!
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