Earn a Lot of Money by Fixing LCD Monitors

Maybe you run a computer repair business or a tech store. And every day people keep coming to ask you to repair their LCD monitors, but every time you have to tell them to go somewhere else because that's not something you can do. 

01 Little known facts about LCD monitor repair

People often don’t understand just how easy LCD monitor repair can often be. Let’s face it, when your LCD is involved in a disastrous accident, say, by being dropped on the floor, the LCD screen is often the component most likely to be affected.

Often enough, when this happens, the owner just takes the laptop down to the nearest service center and pays exorbitant charges to repair the laptop, charges that are absolutely not necessary to pay when you consider the fact that nine times out of ten, LCD repair is really a do it yourself job. This means that there’s absolutely no need to give in to exorbitant demands at your local service center. Just follow these simple steps and you’ll be able to repair your laptop’s LCD screen yourself, and incidentally, will also save yourself a considerable amount of money in the process.

Remember that a cracked LCD doesn’t always mean a dysfunctional one, and being able to retrieve it means an obvious saving in hard cash. Remember that you have nothing at all to lose by attempting a repair job on your damaged LCD monitor - after all, if you intend to throw it out anyway, it can only be a saving to you if you manage to salvage it and make it work after all. Remember that a repair job can easily save you a couple of hundred dollars, and in these days, when things are increasingly expensive, that’s nothing to turn ones nose up at.

Now, the core of most LCD monitor repair issues usually lies with its capacitors. An LCD monitor tends to malfunction when its capacitors are shorted out. Note that I’m not talking about a cracked monitor here, but merely about a monitor that’s demonstrating some functional issues.

Take a look at the screen when you boot up your laptop. Is it much dimmer than what you’re used to? Does it flicker a lot? Does it have some strange lines running across it? Any or all of these things means a bad capacitor that needs replacement. Replacing it is a simple matter, but you’ll need a soldering iron. Try to locate whether the faulty capacitor is on the power board or on the video board. The top an undamaged capacitor will be flat, whereas the top of a damaged capacitor will bulge upwards. These are just the sort of things you need to know to be successful at LCD monitor repair.

02 LCD monitor repair: replacing capacitors

You may have booted up your laptop one morning and found that the LCD screen suddenly seemed to be having problems. If you don’t know much about LCD monitor repair, you may wonder what you could do about it. Many people go to a repair technician, and end up having to spend a lot of money, but this is usually only because they’re ignorant of how easily repairable most laptop issues really are.

The simple fact is that some problems with a laptop’s LCD are easily solvable, and these issues are also the most common ones. Of course, if you’ve dropped your laptop on the floor and your LCD is in four pieces, you shouldn’t expect to be able to repair it, but if the issue is something more simple, like a flickering screen, you certainly can expect to be able to do a little LCD monitor repair yourself.

Now, the usual issue when your screen flickers or develops lines in it, lies in the capacitors that power the inverter board of your LCD, or in the capacitors that help power the video card. The bottom line here is ‘capacitor trouble’, period. Now, there’s nothing to worry about. If you’re a handy man (or woman) with a soldering iron, you’ll get those capacitors replaced and your laptop screen working again in next to no time at all.

Generally speaking, you know that there’s a problem with the capacitors if you have issues with the screen, but it still seems to be working, no matter how badly. Open up your laptop and lay open the video and inverter circuit boards, and examine them carefully. If you’re not certain which boards these are, look up the manufacturer’s manual, which is usually easy (and free) to download off their site.

That’s all that it takes. Now, when you have the inverter and the video boards before you, examine the capacitors on these carefully. The top of each capacitor should be flat. Should you see one that seems to bulge upwards slightly at the top, you know that this is one that is ‘blown’ and that your issues with your screen lie here. From this point, repair is easy. You just need to acquire the exact capacitor and to replace the damaged one with the new one, and voila, the screen is working again. I’m not kidding. LCD monitor repair where the issue is damaged capacitors is really this easy!

03 Secrets of LCD monitor repair- how to fix a faulty pixel

With the price of LCD monitor repair and laptop repair in general being what it is a person today often might choose to just live with a problem they have with their laptop or its LCD, so long as the problem isn’t too serious.

A fixed and faulty pixel generally falls into this category. If you have this problem with your LCD, you know how irritating it can be. There will be a little bright or dark spot on your screen that stays that way no matter what you do. You may try rebooting the laptop or even flicking the spot with your finger, but nothing helps. The spot just remains in place, supremely oblivious to all your efforts to remove it.

You may visit your local LCD monitor repair technician, and he may suggest a complete replacement of the LCD screen, something you are absolutely not willing to do for such a minor problem. Finally, you just decide to give up and live with the issue, even though it irritates you tremendously. Well, the good news is that this is a problem that is easily resolvable, and better still, it is a problem that you can easily resolve on your own. It may take a little skill and luck, and a little trouble, but it’s well worth the effort.

There are several ways of fixing this issue and you should try them all and see which works for you. Don’t be disheartened if one technique seems to fail, but go on to try the others. After all you have nothing to lose. These methods will not damage your LCD, and may well solve your issue with the faulty pixel.

There are some special software dedicated to this issue, one of which is JScreenFix. These are the easiest way to fix a pixel issue, and you should try them before anything else. If they work, well and good, but if they don’t fix the issue there are other methods that you can try.

The second method to solving a pixel issue is by the application of pressure. Place a soft cloth on the screen directly over the pixel while your laptop is powered down. Then apply pressure through this soft cloth to the area of the screen containing the faulty pixel. Use a pointed object, but press down through the cloth. Try to press down upon the damaged pixel itself, and, while pressing down on the damaged pixel, boot up the computer. This will often solve the problem with the damaged pixel – that’s all it takes to do some LCD monitor repair.

04 Why go to an LCD monitor repair specialist for a problem with a backlight bulb?

And the answer to that question is, you don’t go to the LCD monitor repair specialist. There’s such a mystique that has been cultivated about laptops that people who often wouldn’t hesitate to take a soldering iron to their PC hesitate when it comes to their laptops.

Of course, there are sometimes good reasons for not touching your laptop’s circuitry – such as, if it happens to still be within its warranty period. If this is so, be warned, trying to repair your laptop on your own may well void the warranty. If your laptop is within its warranty period and develops some problems, the best thing you can do is to turn it over to the qualified people back at the service center. They’ll repair your laptop for you, or may even give you a new and better model instead of your old one. Don’t shake your head in disbelief, because I’ve actually seen this happen more than once.

However, if you’re either past the warranty period, or if you bought your laptop second-hand, you may find yourself with a real problem if your LCD screen suddenly develops a fault, and you need some emergency LCD monitor repair. Under such circumstances, the nearest laptop repair center may want to charge you a completely unreasonable fee for repairing the fault, and if you bought your laptop second hand to save money, you might well balk at paying it. And you should. That’s exactly why, in the course of this article, I’m going to tell you exactly how to repair at least one of the issues that commonly arise with laptop LCD screens.

Now, sometimes, the screen of your laptop may flicker or grow dim, and it’s quite possible that the bulb that lights the screen is failing. Yes, it can be something as simple as that. The greater number of LCD screens are lit by what is known as a cold cathode. This bulb draws its power from an inverter. You can save a considerable amount of money by replacing this piece of equipment yourself. The first thing to do is to disconnect the monitor and dismantle its back panel. This includes the shielding, of course. Once this is done, the inner circuitry will be laid bare.

You’ll find that the bulb has a shield around it, which you also have to remove. Remember to do this in a well-ventilated area, as there can sometimes be poisonous fumes inside the case. Now simply replace the bulb and re-assemble the device and you’re good to go. Your monitor should be as well lit as ever when you power it on again, closing another successful episode in LCD monitor repair.

05 Reasons why ‘doing it yourself’ is best with LCD monitor repair

There was a time when most people would never even have dreamed of attempting to resolve a problem with their laptop with their own hands, or of trying those hands at LCD monitor repair. People believed that laptops were essentially very complex devices and that they were impossible to repair except by an extremely well trained and qualified technician.

And at one point this assumption might well have been accurate. Laptops were still in the experimental stages, and they were not very modular and could often be difficult to figure out and understand by anyone who was not a qualified technician. But as more and more people bought laptops, it became worthwhile for manufacturers to simplify the processes of their production. They did so in a number of ways. First of all, they made the actual construction of the laptops more modular. This made the laptops easier to assemble, and thus cut production costs. As a side effect, it also made laptops easier to repair by anyone who was really interested in doing so. Manufacturers also made many of the components of a laptop easier to produce, and component designs became more efficient.

All of this had the unintended effect of making LCD monitor repair easier as well. However, despite this change for the better, laptop repair costs remained high. Why this should be so is impossible to say. Perhaps laptop technicians just felt like keeping costs high. However, more technologically savvy customers began to react to this disparity between easy of repair and repair cost by repairing their laptops themselves. This is not as hard a task as it may first appear, precisely because of the way manufacturers have simplified the entire production process.

Yes, needs a certain basic knowledge of some repair skills like soldering, but these are easy to learn, and once you have learned them, repairing your laptop actually becomes quite easy. Laptop LCD screens are an excellent case in point. Repairing them is usually extremely easy, and generally just involves replacing some blown capacitors, a job that takes no more than an hour or two, and which can instantly return your LCD screen to full function.

Why should you pay an exorbitant price for a job that is essentially so simple? Almost ninety percent of issues that arise with an LCD screen are linked to a simple capacitor problem, and can be solved by a simple replacement of the damaged capacitors. So the next time your screen flickers just remember that LCD monitor repair can be simple do it yourself job to repair it.

06 Some ways in which you can effectively engage in LCD monitor repair.

Things go wrong, and when those things happen to be your LCD monitor you need to know a little about LCD monitor repair. So what do you do when you wake up one morning and boot up your laptop and find that your laptop’s screen is, well, simply not working too well.

If you’re like most people you rush it over to the repair shop, only to be very dismayed at the prices the technicians there quote you for repairs. And if you’re like most people, you end up paying those prices or doing without your laptop until you can afford to repair it. Fortunately, however, there’s a third option, and it’s called repairing your laptop yourself. Of course you need some simple do-it-yourself skills, like the ability to use a soldering iron. And let’s face it, that’s something just about anyone can do if they set their mind to it.

Now, in the course of this article we’ll discuss just how you can go about LCD monitor repair. If your laptop is on but the screen still remains dark or flickers or malfunctions in any way, you need to check that the screen is receiving power before anything else. The screen is powered by an inverter circuit and a video card, and a fault in either of these can cause a problem with how your screen functions. There is also a cold cathode bulb in the inverter that actually provides illumination to the screen, and this can be burnt out as well.

Check the bulb before you do anything else. If it’s burnt out, replace it. Please be careful when you lift the built-in shield off the bulb, because poisonous mercury vapors can collect under it. Make sure you work in a well-ventilated area. If the bulb is fine, examine the inverter circuit and the video card. What you’re looking for is blown capacitors.

These should be pretty easy to spot – a capacitor that’s working well has a top that’s perfectly flat, but a capacitor that’s ‘blown its top,’ so to speak, has a top that’s rounded, bulged upward with pressure. If you spot any of these blown capacitors, you know where the fault lies.

Remove the faulty capacitors from the board, and replace them with new capacitors that you can source from any electronics store. That’s it. Voila – your laptop’s LCD should be working again, and this shows just how easy LCD monitor repair can be.

07 How capacitor problems can be the root of LCD monitor repair

The simple fact is that LCD monitor repair is easy. If you’re handy with a soldering iron, I’d advise you against taking your laptop in for repair the next time there is an issue with your LCD. This is because most issues with laptop LCDs are caused by capacitor trouble. As a laptop gets older, the capacitors within it tend to self destruct due to simple old age. When this happens, it can cause a slew of problems, ranging from a display that’s completely dark, to a display that has strange lines flickering across it. You might even encounter a screen that is extremely dim, or which flickers constantly along its entire surface.

If your screen is nearly dim you should consider the fact that perhaps the cold cathode that backlights the screen might be failing. If this is the case, it is a simple matter of replacing the bulb. If, on the other hand, the bulb appears to be fine, you should consider the fact that you may have some blown capacitors.

The first step in LCD monitor repair, of course, is dismantling the LCD. You need to remove the housing, and this is usually held in place by screws. Removing them is usually a simple matter, but sometimes the screw holes might be protected by rubber plugs or disguised with a sticker. First remove the screws and then try to take the housing away from the LCD. Bear in mind that the housing of any LCD snap-clips together, so a small lever and a certain amount of gentle force might be needed to separate the different components of the housing.

Be very careful not to damage the housing as you ease it apart. If possible, try not to use a metal tool as a lever. After removing the housing you then need to take off the cover that protects the LCD. Some covers just lift off after you remove the retaining screws, but certain makes require that the cover slide off. You will find two boards powering the LCD, the inverter board, and the board for the LCD’s video card.

You need to examine the capacitors on each of these boards. Take a careful look at each capacitor. If the top of any capacitor is rounded, it means that that capacitor is blown and needs to be replaced. The final step in LCD monitor repair is to replace the capacitor with another one that is exactly equal to it in voltage and capacity, and your LCD should function again.

08 How to solder capacitors when you attempt an LCD monitor repair.

A lot of people seem to feel rather intimidated at the thought of trying their hands at LCD monitor repair, but actually basic, and even advanced laptop repair, including repairing the LCD, is not really that difficult or complex. Of course, if you happen to have dropped your laptop or have cracked or broken the LCD in any way, a replacement is probably your only option, but if your problem with your LCD is not this serious, the chances are that you can repair it fairly easily and quickly, and perhaps without needing to have recourse to a repair shop at all.

The core of LCD monitor repair is a little cylindrical device with a flat top called an electrolytic capacitor. An electrolytic capacitor is an electrical storage device and these little devices are what actually power your LCD screen. When one of these devices blows, your LCD begins to malfunction, or may stop functioning altogether.

However, an electrolytic capacitor is not the only thing that can go wrong with a laptop LCD screen. An apparent problem with your laptop LCD screen could have a much simpler cause. For example, if your screen were suddenly to become very dim, it isn’t necessarily a capacitor issue. Of course it could still be a capacitor issue, but it is far more likely that it’s actually an issue with the cold cathode light that provides illumination for the screen.

Yes, one of the causes of a malfunctioning monitor is simply a bulb that has been fused, or become dim over time. Of course, replacing this bulb is not a simple matter, but it isn’t something that’s particularly complicated either. The first thing you need to do if you’re going to try to repair your laptop yourself, is to acquire the manufacturer’s own maintenance manual. Getting your hands on this is no big deal, as it is often available for download on the manufacture’s own site.

Acquiring the manual will ensure that not only will you make less mistakes when dismantling your laptop and putting it together again, but also that you will have a more accurate mental picture of the different components that make up your laptop, allowing you to repair it better, and to diagnose faults more quickly and accurately. Once you acquire the official manual, LCD monitor repair is usually a simple enough matter.

09 How I taught my friend about LCD monitor repair

Learning LCD monitor repair can help you on the path to technological independence. In this modern age, we spend our entire lives surrounded by technology, and we are very dependent upon it. And our dependence upon it also translates into dependence on those who manufacture and maintain that technology. Which is all perfectly alright, so long as those who maintain our technology don’t start to take advantage of our dependence and relative ignorance.

But this is exactly what has begun to happen. As a reasonably technologically savvy person myself, I’ve often watched repair specialists for laptops charge a disproportionately large amount for a job that I could have done myself, and which I would have found comparatively easy to do. So when a friend of mine came to me with a laptop that was giving him trouble, it was virtually a pleasure to steer him towards repairing it himself.

Because the fact is that most of these little LCD monitor repair issues can really be repaired ourselves. All we need is a little confidence and a little knowledge. Of course it takes some effort to acquire that knowledge, but, let’s face it, it doesn’t take that much effort to download a technical manual for your laptop from the manufacturer’s website and to read through it. Just doing that simple thing give you a working knowledge of what’s inside your laptop, and makes it that much easier for you to set it right when it inevitably goes wrong. Because the fact is that electronics will go wrong, no matter what you do or how much care you take. And that’s exactly why you should know how to correct them.

In the case of my friend’s laptop, there were some dark lines wavering across his screen, and I knew that without corrective measures, his screen was going to shut down altogether. However, I knew where the problem was. Almost anyone who has done any reading up on laptop screen LCD issues on the net knows that these issues tend to run to nest in the capacitors.

In the case of my friend’s laptop, those black lines wavering across his screen pointed to a problem in the power supply, a problem that could probably be traced to a blown filter capacitor. In this case, as in many other cases of replacing blown capacitors, the greatest challenge to me was in simply getting the thing open. Yes, it takes a lot of care to get a monitor open, because demoniac manufacturers use a clip to seal it together. After I finally pried it apart, it was a snap to find the failed capacitor and replace it. They’re easy to recognize, failed capacitors are round on top, and good ones are flat. All you need after this to complete your LCD monitor repair is a soldering iron.

10 Some things you absolutely must know about LCD monitor repair

Perhaps the thing I should talk about first of all, when discussing LCD monitor repair, is how bad the quality of the parts these days is. I’m not talking about the main components themselves, but rather about the parts that make up those components. For example, there are the capacitors that power the average LCD monitor. These capacitors can last for years if they are of good quality.

However, if they happen to be of bad quality, they can often fail a few months after purchase. This is a direct result of the massive outsourcing to China that companies are engaged in these days. While outsourcing may drop production costs, it can also reduce quality in difficult to see areas, such as the capacitors used in your LCD’s monitor. Of course, if your laptop happens to be in the warranty period, you don’t have much of an issue. You just take the laptop in to the service center, and they will replace the faulty parts.

Nevertheless, I still think it’s a bad system because, having repaired laptops for some years, I notice a definite degradation in the quality of the parts used in newer laptops. The fact that these parts are of such bad quality means that they are inevitably going to fail, which means that a person who for any reason has a laptop which for any reason isn’t within the guarantee period, has a laptop that is inevitably going to fail and leave him with expensive repairs on his hands.

The good news is that LCD monitor repair is really very easy, so if you have an LCD that fails due to a substandard part, you can easily replace that part with one that is much better in quality. In other words, repairing your laptop can actually massively improve the quality of the part replaced, since the part that you replace will almost always be better than the quality of the original part.

Once you go through the technical manual for your laptop, which can easily be acquired online, repairing your laptop is simply a matter of being handy with a soldering iron. Most issues that can occur with a laptop’s LCD screen, for example, are simply caused by substandard capacitors. Replace the damaged capacitors with good ones from your local electronics store, and you may well find that your laptop works even better than before, and more reliably. So LCD monitor repair can leave you with a laptop that works better than ever before.

 11 Tips and tricks of LCD monitor repair

There are some things that everyone who is interested in LCD monitor repair should know, and some precautions that, if taken, can save one endless trouble. One of the most important things that you should know about LCD monitor repair is that you should never attempt it without complete information. Complete information here means, first of all, downloading the manufacturer’s repair and maintenance manual.

While what is supplied with a laptop is a fairly useless user manual that is of no use to you whatsoever, most manufacturers will allow you to download a highly detailed manual from their website. Make sure that you do this, because it is essential, if not crucial to LCD monitor repair. Think of the maintenance manual as a sort of road map. If you know where all the streets are, you’ll never be lost. The principle is exactly the same here. If you know where all the components are within your laptop, you’ll be less likely to make time consuming or costly errors.

So the first step to LCD monitor repair is downloading the maintenance manual. The second step is to know exactly what you’re doing. You’d be surprised at how many people try to repair their laptops or even their PCs thinking that they’ll ‘figure things out’. This is absolutely the wrong attitude, because it can lead to very expensive mistakes. Do you know that putting in a capacitor upside down (with the incorrect polarity) can cause considerable damage? It’s absolutely true. So it’s important to know exactly what you’re doing, and the only way you’ll do that is with information. Perhaps the best source of information would be a book on laptop repair or LCD monitor repair.

Get a book of this sort, and the chances are that you will make few, if any, errors. Then go on to websites and forums and on to YouTube, and see what people are saying about the problem you’re having, and how to set it right. You’d be surprised at the amount of information that is out there if you only take the trouble to seek it out. There are detailed videos and pages of tutorials, and if you add all this to the information contained in a good book on laptop repair or LCD monitor repair, you’ll have a very clear picture in your mind about what you have to do. Then the chances are that not only will you not make any errors when you go about LCD monitor repair, but that you’ll also repair that LCD monitor successfully.

12 Tracking the changes you make when you try your hand at LCD monitor repair

You might be surprised to hear this, but knowledge alone is insufficient when it concerns LCD monitor repair. The simple fact is that no matter how well you understand LCD monitor repair, and how many books you read on the subject, you still need one other attribute if you are to be successful at it. Yes, you may have read a lot of books, and may even have done a training course or two on the subject. You may have gone through online tutorials as well, as well as watched YouTube videos.

Nevertheless, you can still make mistakes, and those mistakes could well prove expensive.

So how do you limit these mistakes? One of the simplest ways to reduce the number of critical errors when you go about LCD monitor repair is to make careful notes of everything that you do. This leaves nothing to chance. If you unplug a connector, make careful notes as to its position and settings. Better still, take photographs. In this age of digital cameras, photographs are an excellent idea, because they give you an unmistakable record of the state of the different components inside your laptop before you touched it.

You should take careful photographs of all the components involved at every stage of dismantling your laptop. This careful record will stand you in very good stead when the time comes to put it together again. It will show you where every single component has to go. And will ensure that when the time comes to put your laptop together again you’re very sure about the placement of the various components.

But you shouldn’t rely upon photographs alone. Take notes upon something as simple as where the different screws go in your laptop. Many laptops use screws of many different types in their internal configuration and something as simple as this is where you are likely to go wrong in reassembling your laptop.

So play things safe, and make notes of all your actions. Remember that something as small as a capacitor replaced with the wrong polarity can cause serious issues for you later on, or the very least ensure that your repair job is unsuccessful.

If you have made careful notes, and if you have photographic records, you will be able to not only avoid errors in putting together your laptop but will be able to trace an error in your LCD monitor repair job should one such arise.

13 Going about LCD monitor repair when your monitor leaves you ‘in the dark’

There are a lot of tutorials and articles on the net that tell you what to do when you want to try your hand at LCD monitor repair. Mostly, minor issues are related to a disruption of the power flow to the monitor. Minor issues involved with LCD monitor repair can also include a cold cathode lighting system that’s failing.

In case you didn’t know it, there’s a cold cathode light that’s the source of the illumination in your monitor display, and your monitor can appear very dim if this light is failing. In this case, it’s just a simple matter of replacing the bulb. However, what do you do if your monitor is completely dark? Well, here’s a step by step guide. The very first thing that you need is a comfortable work space. Place the monitor face down on a soft cloth or on some padded materials that will prevent damage to the monitor screen.

Now carefully unscrew the screws. You might expect the casing to come apart, but in reality this isn’t at all what happens, because most manufacturers include a catch system that still keeps the casing together. These clips are internal, and releasing them will require you to know what you’re doing. I’d suggest downloading the manufacturer’s manual if you don’t have it already. Now, based upon the manual, try to release these clips. Make sure that if you use a lever to separate the case, your lever is made of plastic and not steel.

Beware of using too much force, or you may be left with a case that’s in pieces. Once you’ve got the case open, the rest is much easier. Again, based upon the manufacturer’s manual, I want you to locate two circuit boards. One is the inverter board, and the other is the video card board. I also want you to take a look at the cold cathode light that provides illumination to the screen, just in case it’s burned out. If the problem is with the light, replacing it is an elementary matter. However, if the problem is not with the light, dealing with it will involve additional complications.

Now you have to look at the boards, and especially at the capacitors on them. If any of them have a rounded top, that’s the one that’s damaged. You need to get a capacitor of the same capacity and voltage, and replace the damaged one with the new one, making sure that you don’t reverse the polarity. Take photos to prevent mistakes. And when you complete your LCD monitor repair your screen should be working again.

14 Why opening the monitor’s case is the hardest part of LCD monitor repair

Many people find this hard to believe, but getting your LCD monitor open can actually be the hardest part of LCD monitor repair. This is because manufacturers don’t really make these cases to open. I don’t know whether this is because many monitors these days are made in China. I do notice that many Chinese toys operate on this ‘non-openable principle’.

Though it’s not necessarily fair to blame the Chinese - it’s just as possible, and even likely, that this irritating phenomenon was put in as part of the original design. I notice that there seems to be a tendency among manufacturers of computer equipment and even software to treat users like technological ignoramuses, and to give the user as little opportunity as possible of repairing his own equipment.

You may wonder why I have spent so much time talking about this, but it’s something you’ll understand if you try your hand at LCD monitor repair. You’ll find that the case does not simply come apart when you unscrew the requisite screws. Instead, you’ll find that the case is actually held together by a catch as well, and that this catch is almost impossible to release.

In fact, I would advise you to be extremely careful when you go about releasing this. This is actually the point when you are most likely to do irreparable damage to your laptop. I would seriously advise you to download and read the manufacturer’s maintenance manual carefully to prepare yourself to do this job right. I would also seriously advise you to go to YouTube and check out a few tutorial videos that show exactly how to open your kind of monitor case. Only after you have done these things should you attempt the physical operation of opening your monitor case.

Generally speaking, if you get past this stage, you’ll find that the rest of the job of repairing your monitor is actually relatively easy, and even fun if your hobby is electronic repair. There are tons of tutorials on the net that will fill you in on the details of LCD monitor repair, but in short, the issue is usually with the capacitors, and these are a snap to replace if you’re a dab hand with a soldering iron. As a matter of fact, there is a consensus among many laptop repair specialists that opening the monitor’s casing is really the hardest part of LCD monitor repair.

15 Learning what’s inside your monitor before you attempt LCD monitor repair

You may have heard that opening up your monitor’s case is one of the hardest parts of LCD monitor repair, and you heard right. Here’s why. Most of the components used in laptops these days are made in China, which means that there’s a great deal of standardization in their manufacture, no matter who the ostensible manufacturer might be.

However, the cases are another matter altogether. While most of the cases have a catch inside holding them together, this catch varies from one make of laptops to another, and the methods of releasing this catch also vary. This is why I tell people that they need to download the official manufacturer’s maintenance manual before starting on opening their monitor’s case. Usually this can be acquired entirely for free from the manufacturer’s own website, but just in case it isn’t available, or even as an adjunct to it, you can stream a few YouTube videos to ensure that you do the job just right.

Because it’s very important that you do – it’s quite possible for you to break your monitor’s casing if you do it wrong. However, once you get your monitor’s casing open, the real job of repairing your monitor begins. There might be a shield under the casing, and you need to remove that shield carefully. Beneath you’ll find the power connector. You need to photograph this, as well as making notes of the different connections. Make marks near the connections if that will help you remember them. It is VERY easy to make a mistake here, so please make sure you take every possible precaution BEFORE you disconnect the connectors.

The next step is to examine the inverter board in the laptop. This is easy to find if you have the manufacturer’s maintenance manual. Once you have the inverter board in your sight, you need to take a good look at the many capacitors mounted on it, which is exactly where the core of LCD monitor repair usually lies. Many manufacturers are not above using cheap capacitors, and these have a nasty tendency to blow.

This can happen as a result of age, but it can also happen simply because you allowed your laptop to get too hot. Whatever the reason, if any of these little suckers have rounded tops, you know that you need to replace them. Make sure to photograph the inverter board, and then grab your soldering iron. Get the polarity right when you do the replacement, and you can consider your LCD monitor repair job done, and your monitor will be working again before you know it.

16 Secrets of LCD monitor repair – why monitors fail so often

If you have a lot of experience using laptops, you may have noticed that a great many users need to consult a LCD monitor repair specialist a year or so into using their laptops, and you may well have wondered why this should be so. The answer actually is rather simple. Many of the laptops today use internal electronic components that are really very substandard.

For example, if you know anything about monitor repair, you also know that the capacitors are usually the first component to go.  You would think that manufacturers would react to this by installing better capacitors. But in reality, it doesn’t work that way at all. For some reason, manufactures are installing capacitors that are extremely substandard.

Many of these capacitors are so low in quality that they can only stand about a thousand hours of use, which is exactly why so many LCD monitors fail so early in their working life. Did you know that an LCD that is repaired by a conscientious person who really cares about what he is doing will rarely give capacitor trouble for the next five years. This is because good quality capacitors last up to eight thousand hours, and are unlikely to give trouble in all of that time. This is one thing you need to remember when you engage in laptop or LCD monitor repair.

Always use better parts than the manufacturer provided, preferably the best parts that are available to you. Do this, and each repair job will be a source of considerable satisfaction to you, because you know that you will never encounter that issue or problem ever again. Most electronic components are relatively inexpensive, but since you are using the best parts, you should, as a matter of course, be careful of how you use those parts.

Many capacitors can sustain serious damage if attached incorrectly to the circuit, that is to say, attached with the incorrect polarity. Make sure that you take precautions to ensure that you do not do this. You should take pictures and notes of your monitor circuit board, and so ensure that you get the repair job done right. These precautions are easy enough to take, but they can prevent any number of complications, and as such are highly recommended.

You’d be amazed at how much of LCD monitor repair depends upon simple considerations like this rather than upon anything very complicated, and ensuring that you get these precautions right will prevent a great deal of disappointment when you attempt LCD monitor repair.

17 Learn all about what’s inside your LCD monitor before you attempt LCD monitor repair

There are all sorts of components inside your laptop and its LCD screen, and if you’re having some problems with your screen and are thinking of some do-it-yourself LCD monitor repair, it’s important that you understand what all the components are and what they do. The first things that you need to know about are the connectors. One of the most important connectors inside your LCD is the connector that brings the feed in from the video card. Another important connector may connect the inverter to the cold cathode light that lights up the screen.

Please note that in some makes of laptops, this light can actually be attached directly to the inverter card that powers it, but on other laptops there’s a connector bridging the two. There will also be a connector bringing power to the inverter circuit itself. Before you disconnect any connector inside your monitor or laptop, be sure that you make careful notes about its position, and also photograph it carefully, if possible. I greatly recommend making photographs of the connections before you disconnect anything, if you’re trying to get the hang of LCD monitor repair.

Even if you can’t take photographs for any reason, make sure that your notes are adequate to the task of enabling you to rejoin all the connectors correctly. Make marks near the connectors themselves if necessary to prevent any errors. You must not underestimate the importance of all this advice, because connectors can look very alike one another and it’s quite possible for you to get the connections wrong. And if you do, the damage to your laptop could be incalculable. Or at least, it could be damage that you hadn’t calculated upon when you started to repair your laptop. Remember that you should avoid this sort of incidental damage, because often enough, the only problem with an LCD monitor is a malfunctioning backlight.

If this is the case with your LCD monitor, carefully remove the bad light and buy a good replacement for it at the same power from your local electronics store. Make sure that the component you buy is the best quality that you can obtain. This is very important in a world where manufacturers seem increasingly to use the worst quality available. Also, you don’t want to have to repeat a repair job too often. Once you obtain the replacement, just put it in place of the damaged light. The same goes for the capacitors. These usually can be a problem due to low quality, and are at the heart of most LCD monitor repair issues, but fortunately, replacing them is easy.

18 Dealing with the biggest problem in LCD monitor repair

Knowing everything about LCD monitor repair isn’t going to help you if you break your monitor. Perhaps the worst thing that can happen to your LCD monitor is for it to crack, or worse, to break into pieces. This can actually happen, and has happened to perhaps thousands of people around the world, but that is hardly likely to make you feel better when it happens to you. However, you shouldn’t despair, because it is still possible for you to repair your laptop at a reasonable price. Well, the price can be reasonable if you do it yourself and don’t haul your machine in to a repair center, where the price for a repair job can be quite unreasonable at times.

If you’re willing to try your hand at repairing your laptop yourself, then you can save yourself quite a lot of money. But if you’re thinking of actually repairing an LCD screen that’s cracked across or (worse) broken into pieces, you can just forget about it. These things just don’t happen in the real world. Once your LCD screen has suffered such serious physical damage, it belongs in the junk. However, you can still save a good deal of money on replacing it.

You can save money on repair costs if you do the LCD monitor repair yourself instead of handing it in to a repair shop, and there are other ways to save money as well, which I’ll go into a little later.

One thing that you need to do before anything else is to get your LCD monitor open. This might be a little more difficult than it sounds and involves a little more than simply unscrewing some screws. Oh, the screws are there, all right, but even after you remove them there’s a horrible catch hidden within the casing that’s very difficult to remove. Please be careful here or you’ll end up with a case that’s broken just the same way your monitor screen is, and you don’t want that.

After you’ve opened the case carefully, make a careful note of the make of the monitor LCD, and then try to find a working model second-hand on ebay. If you can find a working model with a seller with a good reputation, buy it. You stand to save a great deal of money this way. Once your replacement arrives, take photographs of all the connectors before disconnecting them, and then disconnect the damaged part and put the replacement in its place. Voila, your LCD monitor repair job is done, and your laptop is back in business!

19 How to make LCD monitor repair inexpensive

The main problem with LCD monitor repair is how much it costs. What with the cost of replacement parts and the charges that the technician adds in, you end up spending a small fortune, so much so, in fact, that many people choose to just replace their laptops when something goes seriously wrong. This usually costs them more, of course, than a repair job would, but on the other hand, they get themselves a new laptop for the price, one well within the guarantee or warranty period, and one that they don’t have to bother their heads about for some time to come.

This attitude is understandable, of course, but wasteful. Why should you get a new laptop when you have one that might perhaps have something relatively minor and easily repairable wrong with it. This is even more important when the fault involves your monitor screen. It’s always preferable to go in for LCD monitor repair when something goes wrong with your screen. This is because LCD monitors are rarely too far gone to repair – unless, of course, they happen to break into several pieces. If your monitor has broken into several pieces, then I’m afraid you’ll have to scrap it. But you can still save a lot of money, even if you have to do that!

What you need to do is to go to your local laptop repair shop (or several repair shops) and ask them if they happen to have a non-functional laptop for sale that is the very same make as your own, and which has a working LCD screen. If they have one for sale, see if they are willing to give it to you cheap. Cheap, in this case, means cheaper than the cost of a new LCD screen. If you haven’t already done so, open up your damaged laptop and check the make of the LCD screen, and see what price the manufacturer is offering it for.

The chances are that any screen (or even a damaged laptop) that you buy second hand will be cheaper than that. Then all you need to do is to replace your screen, taking the necessary precautions, such as notes and photographs, to ensure that you do it right. If your screen isn’t damaged, it becomes even easier to repair it, with most LCD monitor repair jobs only requiring that you replace a bulb or some capacitors, an easy enough job if you’re any good with a soldering iron.

20 Crucial things to do when you go about LCD monitor repair

Actually, LCD monitor repair is easier than repairing a laptop.There are a good many things that can go wrong with a laptop, but fortunately, only a limited number of things that can go wrong with an LCD monitor. So, if your laptop’s LCD happens to be malfunctioning, and you want to try your hand at LCD monitor repair, here’s how you go about it. The first thing you need to do, obviously, is to check where the fault lies. We’re assuming that you haven’t dropped the laptop and cracked the LCD right across, or broken it into pieces, in which case there’s a very obvious cause to your LCD screen not working.

If you really have done something of this sort, then you need to replace the LCD screen, period. It’s not possible to repair physical damage to an LCD screen that is of this magnitude. Even a replacement can be cheaper if you do it yourself than if you hand it in to your local repair technician. However, this articles deals with actually repairing things that might go wrong with your laptops LCD screen. Let’s say that you woke up one morning and found that your laptop came on and booted up, but that the screen remained dark.

There might be any number of reasons for this, but the first thing you need to check is whether the screen is getting feed from the motherboard. Take a powerful light and hold it up to the monitor while the laptop is booted up. If you can see the desktop, the motherboard is functional. Now you need to power down your laptop and carefully disconnect the power cables. After the power is off, open up the laptop’s case so you can get at the LCD inside. Be careful when you open up the case. Though the case is held together primarily with screws, there is also a hidden catch inside most monitor casings that is extremely difficult to release. If you must use a lever here, make sure it is of plastic.

Also, I must underline the fact that you must be careful when releasing this catch and prying the halves of the casing apart – a great many hypothetical do-it-yourselfers have broken their laptops’ casings at this point. Make sure you don’t join their number. Once the laptop is open, all you have to do is check the bulb that provides light to the screen. If this is spoiled, replace it. That’s all it usually takes to get a screen up and running, and LCD monitor repair is rarely more complex than this.

21 LCD monitor repair: Installing a replacement from another laptop

One nice thing about LCD monitor repair is that if your LCD were to be ruined completely (and that does happen), you can find a replacement quite easily, and at a reasonable price. The best place to look for a cheap replacement is at your local computer repair stores.  This is because these stores deal in damaged goods, and they may well have a laptop for sale that is no longer working, but which has a working LCD. This sometimes happens. Sometimes a person spills liquid on to their laptop, and then they take the laptop in for repair. Sometimes it’s repairable. At other times, it’s not.

When it’s not repairable, the person concerned might ask the repair establishment if they can try to sell the laptop. Now sometimes, in a laptop of this sort, everything else may be damaged, but the LCD may still be in working condition. Computer repair stores themselves often buy such laptops from each other, and if they have one available, should be willing to sell one to you as well. Once you’ve bought the other laptop, you should get its case open. Removing a screen from its casing is no easy job, as perhaps you know.

The best thing to do is to practice opening a screen on the damaged laptop before you try it on your own laptop. Once you get the hang of it, you can then go on to open your own laptop’s casing. Once you have the casings open, it’s just a question of disconnecting the two screens and interchanging them, in itself a rather simple job so long as you take a few reasonable precautions. To the right of the screen you’ll find a cable that must be disconnected, as well as a wire for grounding.

Not all laptops have the grounding wire, but some of them do. Both the grounding wire and the cable that leads to the motherboard need a lot of care when you go about disconnecting them. Don’t be afraid to take a lot of notes when you try to do any LCD monitor repair and even to take photographs should you think it necessary. If your screen was broken, be careful not to cut yourself. Also be careful to remove any shards of broken glass from the laptop itself.

Now, simply interchange the screens, and your LCD monitor repair is done. That’s all that it takes, and it is a simple job that need not cost you a fortune if you do it yourself.

22 Backlights and inverters in LCD monitor repair

When a laptop monitor goes on the blink, there are just a few things that can be wrong with it. Any reasonable expert in LCD monitor repair will tell you that the fault can lie with the inverter, the backlight, or the video card board. The problem is telling where the fault lies. When the fault is with one of these three components, how exactly do you tell where the fault lies? After all, you probably have no testing equipment at home, and you can’t afford to change all three components. But there’s no need to worry, because there are methods of diagnosing which issue ails your laptop.

The first thing to consider is just how your screen started malfunctioning. Did it to out all at once? If you, the fault is probably with the backlight. This is a cold cathode light that is usually either a part of the inverter board, or connected to draw power from that board through a cable. Now it’s quite interesting, but all it takes is for this bulb to go out for your screen to malfunction. And yes, sometimes, when a repair facility takes a small fortune for LCD monitor repair, all they’re really doing is replacing a light bulb.

If, on the other hand, the screen didn’t go out all at once, but gave a certain amount of trouble beforehand, then the trouble is probably with the inverter board. The inverter board can have a number of issues, but the most usual is blown capacitors. You can just replace the inverter or video boards if they’re spoiled. Check both boards and look over the capacitors carefully. One of the boards will usually have ruined capacitors if the backlight is fine. If this is the case, you have a choice before you – to either replace the boards or the capacitors themselves.

Replacing the boards will obviously be easier. However, it is also more expensive. The cost of capacitors is actually very negligible. But of course, if you choose to repair the board, this will involve removing the capacitors and soldering new ones in their place. This may seem a complex job, but it’s actually not too difficult once you get the hang of handling a soldering iron. If this is the way you choose to go, remember to note carefully the polarity of the capacitors – get that wrong and you may have a serious LCD monitor repair problem on your hands.

23 LCD monitor repair for water damage

So this article is going to be all about LCD monitor repair for water damage. If you spill liquids or water on your laptop, there’s very little that can be done to retrieve it most of the time. However, if the liquids were only spilled on the LCD there is a far greater chance that you may be able to repair the laptop. This is true even if the LCD has suffered a complete failure and is no longer working. This is because there is a very limited amount of things that can go wrong with a laptop’s LCD.

Yes, waster damage is a serious problem when it comes to LCD monitor repair. However, with just a limited number of things that can go wrong with the device, there are just a limited number of issues that you need to check out. When liquid gets into a monitor it tends to short out the various circuits within it. The same thing happens when liquid get into your laptop, with the only difference being that your monitor is more repairable, whereas in the case of the laptop there are all sorts of circuits within the device that can be irreparably fused or damaged.

In the case of the monitor, however, there are only two main circuits, the video board circuit and the inverter. Locating the fault in these circuits is actually a job for a repair shop. The only way you can possibly do it yourself is if you have a friend who owns a laptop of the same make which he is willing to lend to you to check whether different parts and the circuit are working. Now you need to open your monitor’s case, which is always a delicate operation, so be careful that you don’t damage the case in any way. This is a lot more likely than you may think, because manufacturers use a system of clips to hold the pieces of the case in place, which means it’s not just a question of undoing a few screws.

Once you’ve undone the screws it’s a question of checking out the various circuit boards that run from a monitor. There are two main circuits within the monitor, the inverter and the video board, as I mentioned before. You need to check these boards for any sign of burnt or damaged components. If you see any sign of damage, you know that the board needs to be changed. This is a fairly simple job. Simply acquire a working replacement board of the correct make and replace the damaged one. As you can see, LCD monitor repair, even for water damage, isn’t that difficult to do.

24 The importance of recycling in LCD monitor repair

There are a lot of people who simply don’t understand the importance of recycling where LCD monitor repair is concerned. LCD monitors are actually easy enough things to repair if you can get the parts you need, but this can be more difficult than you may sometimes think, because the vendors are rarely co-operative. The things that can go wrong with and LCD monitor are few. The two cards that provide power to different components of the monitor can go bad, as can the cold cathode lights that light up the display.

Other than this, it’s just the connector cables that can develop a fault. You can forget about any sort of LCD monitor repair if your LCD is actually cracked in any way. If there’s a crack, even a microscopic one, the chances are the LCD is completely irreparable. However, if it’s one of the other things that are wrong, they are easy to repair. If the boards are ruined, the chances are that it’s just one of the capacitors on the boards that are spoiled, and you can easily replace these. The spoiled capacitors are easy to recognize – they will either have tops that bulge upwards, or else will have a brownish liquid discharged from them, or both.

If you see any of these things, you know that repairing your laptop is a simple capacitor job. All you need to do is to get out your soldering iron and get to work. Find replacements for those capacitors and then get the bad ones out and the good ones in. And make sure you get the polarity straight, as in the plus end goes in the plus side and the minus end goes in the minus side. Make notes in advance, and if possible take photos as well, and you can’t go wrong.

If your back is to the wall, you can just replace the entire board that has the bad capacitors, a job that you can do within fifteen minutes, and not even get your hands dirty, so to speak. However, if the bulbs or the connectors are spoiled, replacing them is an easy job, except that you can’t find parts.

That’s exactly why I said at the beginning of this article that recycling is important. People just throw away spoiled laptops instead of offering them for cheap purchase on eBay or craigslist. You should put up a spoiled laptop for purchase, because there may be someone out there like you who could do with the right part for some LCD monitor repair.

25 Why is LCD monitor repair a fairly simple job?

Most people unconsciously associate LCD monitors with their TVs and laptops, and this makes them believe that LCD monitor repair must necessarily be a complex job. However, this is fallacy, because LCD monitors are actually rather simple devices. They don’t need much of a card or any form of circuit to run them.

It is this little detail that makes repairing them easy. As a matter of fact, most of the time repairing them would be pretty effortless, except that the parts are hard to obtain. However, that is not a hopeless case, as more and more people are realizing that there is a market for non-functional laptops from people who are willing to buy a damaged laptop for the parts. Craigslist is an excellent place to look, as is eBay.

If you can find the part you need, laptop repair is actually elementary. So let’s get down to details. What are the things that can go wrong with a laptop, and how do you deal with them. Because, as I said, an LCD monitor can run off a very simple circuit, manufacturers use a very simple system for LCD monitors. This is what makes LCD monitor repair a relatively easy preposition.

With few operating parts, there are also consequently fewer things that can go wrong, and so there are also consequently fewer things that you have to check out to isolate a fault.

One of the things that you have to check out is quite simply the bulbs that light your monitor. It may amaze you to learn this, but something as simple as a burnt out bulb can cause you problems with your monitor. You should especially look for a burnt out bulb if your monitor suddenly stopped working without any warning, and if the rest of your computer seems to be operating fairly normally. There are sometimes two bulbs lighting a monitor display, and if just half your screen is lit, it’s a sure indication that one of these bulbs has burnt out.

If you open the monitor up and find one of these bulb dark and refusing to light you should nevertheless exchange the bulb with its twin to see whether it lights up. If the twin lights up, the bad bulb needs to be replaced. On the other hand, if the working bulb does not light up, it means that inverter board that powers that socket it spoilt and needs replacement instead. LCD monitor repair is based upon simple rules like these.