Curses!!!! Dropped laptop....

[sunbeam alpine]

....and now all I've got is a white screen.

If I connect an external screen, that works fine, but the laptop screen itself is completely white.

I can't see any damage or cracks on the screen, so does it mean that the screen is broken? (I believe there is also another part (inverter?) which could break. The laptop is definitely worth repairing, but I don't want to order a screen if it's something else that's broken.

Grateful for any suggestions.

[TheOversteerLever]

If the laptop works fine when plugged into an external monitor then surely this would suggest that there's no other damage to the laptop and it's just the screen that was damaged in the drop?

You can get replacement screens for good money from eBay - you could probably find one just by searching for the laptop manufacturer, model and then 'replacement screen.'

I changed the screen on my girlfriends Sony Vaio the other week. The replacement came from eBay for £34 inc. postage and fitted it myself in about 10 minutes. It's as good as new - you'll never know. If I remember rightly, the original and replacement screens were made by the same company.

They'll probably be some instruction videos on YouTube telling you how to do it all but it's not rocket science and you'd have to try hard to properly screw anything up!

Edited by TheOversteerLever on Friday 29th April 13:11

[TheOversteerLever]

The screens are pretty fragile so it doesn't take much to damage them.

Other than the screen itself, there's nothing else internally that you can damage that would result in a white screen - I'm pretty sure you'll be back to normal after fitting a replacement screen.

As I said, if the laptop is fine when using an external monitor, then it's not looking like any other damage has been done.

Not sure what you mean by inverter but as far as I'm aware, the only connection to a laptop screen is a single ribbon connector which I assume takes both the signal and power directly from the GFX card/motherboard.

[ZesPak]

You could find a repair. One point that might be interesting, I once had to do the same on a Dell, and they had a better screen for the laptop (higher res, same size). So it didn't feel much like a repair, more like an "upgrade" and I was happy to pay for the cost.

[Mr_S]

You could pop the screen out and just check it's not a loose connection.

Most laptop screen bezels just pop off nowadays and a couple of screws should allow you access to the back of the panel.

Try reseating cable.

[Zad]

A backlight inverter failure would give a black screen. Definitely worth taking it apart and checking the connectors are okay, a disconnected data cable could definitely give those symptoms.