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Troubleshooting laptop with backlight failure

Troubleshooting laptop with backlight failure

This laptop came for repair because of the LCD screen backlight failure. My customer complained that the laptop LCD screen is black but the laptop works with an external monitor.
Notebook display assembly diagram

After that I took a closer look at the laptop LCD and noticed that the screen is not completely black. The laptop screen still works but the image is very very dull, you barely can see it. It means that the screen still gets data signal from the video card, but for some reason the backlight lamp does not work.

From my experience I know that this problem can be related the lid close switch, faulty inverter board or bad backlight lamp. I checked them one by one.

If you have a similar problem, make sure the lid close witch moves freely. The lid switch is a small button located close to the LCD screen. This button triggers the hibernation or sleep mode when the screen is closed. If the lid close switch is dirty, it might get stuck inside the laptop case and cut off the power from the inverter board. The inverter board works as a power supply for the backlight lamp and if there is no power coming to the inverter board, the backlight lamp will not light up either.



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In my case the lid button worked properly, it did not stuck inside the case. When I was pressing on the button very fast, I was able to light up the screen but only for a fraction of a second. The image was not bright and it had a pinkish tone. A pinkish tone usually indicates a problem with the backlight lamp, not the inverter board.

Even though I suspected the backlight failure, I decided to test this laptop with a new inverter board just in case. But it didn’t help. The screen didn’t light up even after I replace the inverter board. So, I was right, this problem is not related to the inverter board.

Finally, I disconnected the screen backlight lamp connector from the inverter board and connected my test backlight lamp (I removed it from another cracked screen). For the test purpose, you can buy a new backlight lamp here. Try to find a backlight with the connector already attached to it, so you can plug it into the inverter board. Make sure the connector on the backlight lamp is similar to the connector on your LCD screen.

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