Notebook Display Gone Dead - Repair Suggestions?

K

KennyFlys

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I have an older HP (zd7360US) notebook with a dead display. It was intermittent for a period of time then finally gave up the ghost entirely. The computer will power up and I can access the data through my network; just not directly on that computer.

Is there an easy way to find out if it's the actual LCD or the inverter for back lighting?

Is there a highly recommended location for repair for a low cost?

I hate to throw this thing away.

This is really kind of sad. I have an eMachines desktop from 2002 still operating wonderfully short of replacing the drive just once. I could use some PC133 RAM for it but other than that, it has survived five laptops I have owned during the same period of time. Go figure!
 
There should be a female 15 pin connector on the back for an external video output. Connect any VGA or better monitor to that connector. Power up the laptop, the screen redirect button which will be a Fn key along the top. It may look like a display icon, or it may say 'int/ext' or 'crt/lcd' or something like that. Press and hold the Fn or func key, and press the correct Fx button across the top to redirect the video to the external monitor.
 
Scour eBay with the model number and you'll find parts or trashed one you can use for parts.

I got a new keyboard for mine from an eBay repair depot.
 
KennyFlys said:
I have an older HP (zd7360US) notebook with a dead display. It was intermittent for a period of time then finally gave up the ghost entirely. The computer will power up and I can access the data through my network; just not directly on that computer.

Is there an easy way to find out if it's the actual LCD or the inverter for back lighting?

Is there a highly recommended location for repair for a low cost?

I hate to throw this thing away.

This is really kind of sad. I have an eMachines desktop from 2002 still operating wonderfully short of replacing the drive just once. I could use some PC133 RAM for it but other than that, it has survived five laptops I have owned during the same period of time. Go figure!
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When it's supposed to be showing something easily recognizable (e.g. open a wordpad document with really big text), shine a very bright flashlight onto the display in a dim room. If it's just the backlight you should be able to make out something,

Google: "'replacement display' laptop" and you will find several sources for "inexpensive" LCD replacements.
 
mikea said:
Scour eBay with the model number and you'll find parts or trashed one you can use for parts.
Click to expand...

Or, buy a whole laptop of the same model off eBay, one that is defective in the "won't boot" sense, which probably means a bad hard drive or motherboard. Take the screen off it, put it on yours. Sell the remaining good parts (RAM, HD, etc. if you can determine them to be good), and keep the case pieces in case you drop yours.

This is not necessarily a trivial thing to do. :no:
 
I have a couple search parameters set up on eBay but no cigar as of yet.
 
KennyFlys said:
I have a couple search parameters set up on eBay but no cigar as of yet.
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I came across this outfit when looking for a replacement motherboard for my wife's laptop. They actually repaired the motherboard for less than half the cost of a new one. I won't know for sure if it really works until I get it back next week but the tech called me tonight and said it was fixed.

Anyway I think you ought to give them a call, maybe they can help you too.

http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/Computer.Parts.Repair.And.Service.786-845-8323
 
Ken, You have nothing to loose by trying this.

I have seen the ribbon cable connecting the display to the motherboard come loose in laptops many times. The symptom usually starts as the display showing a color pattern scewed to red or to green and maybe even being dim.

What you can do is open the computer and reseat the cable into the connector and see if that helps. If it doesn't you lost nothing but some time. But i have fixed several people's 'broke/dead' displays this way.
 
smigaldi said:
Ken, You have nothing to loose by trying this.

I have seen the ribbon cable connecting the display to the motherboard come loose in laptops many times. The symptom usually starts as the display showing a color pattern scewed to red or to green and maybe even being dim.

What you can do is open the computer and reseat the cable into the connector and see if that helps. If it doesn't you lost nothing but some time. But i have fixed several people's 'broke/dead' displays this way.
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I've fixed lots of things over the years by simply taking them apart and putting them back together again. It's part of "The Knack" :D
 
Ghery said:
I've fixed lots of things over the years by simply taking them apart and putting them back together again. It's part of "The Knack" :D
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It really does amaze people when you attack something, take it all apart, look it over, 'heal it throw touch', and the put it back together without ever looking at a manual.

I was on a dive cruise a couple of year back and one of the other diver's computer display died. I told him if he would let me look at it I could maybe fix it. I had that thing all apart; battery out, hardrive, out, bottom opened with the keyboard laying open. I reseated the ribbon cable put it together and it worked fine. He was so happy and then told me how scared he was when he saw me just pull it to pices and wondered how I knew what I was doing. Of course I just replied that it was "intuitvely obvious" ;)
 
Ken, for a pirep on the outfit I mentioned:

The repaired motherboard showed up yesterday. I put the laptop back together and everything works fine so it looks like they replaced the right component. The cost of the repair was $130 including the return shipping. A couple of local computer repair shops had quoted me $450-500 to replace the motherboard and I had found a couple sources for a new one for around $250.

-lance
 
Wow - timely post to this thread! My son's Macbook crapped out recently - diagnosed to be a bad, dying (now dead) memory chip on the motherboard. Repair shops are just parts swappers here, so $400 estimate (parts and labor) to replace the mother board. I was "this close" to opening this up over the weekend and replacing the memory chip, since my burned fingertips have healed from the tv repair episode.

For the price Lance noted, I'm going to investigate that option first.
 
lancefisher said:
Ken, for a pirep on the outfit I mentioned:

The repaired motherboard showed up yesterday. I put the laptop back together and everything works fine so it looks like they replaced the right component. The cost of the repair was $130 including the return shipping. A couple of local computer repair shops had quoted me $450-500 to replace the motherboard and I had found a couple sources for a new one for around $250.

-lance
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What was the problem?
 
jesse said:
What was the problem?
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Symptoms:

Pressing the power on button resulted in the power LED coming on and the CDROM activity LED flashing once or twice with no video of any kind, no sounds from the speaker, no hard drive activity. The charging function and power off (hold the power button for 10 sec) worked OK. The problem was initially quite intermittent and cycling power several times would eventually result in a successful boot to Windoze. If it booted OK it would run fine until powered off. Eventually it wouldn't power up correctly no matter how many times I tried.

Cure:

The tech said he replaced "the chipset" which I assume means the combo CPU support, north/south bridge etc IC.
 
lancefisher said:
Symptoms:

Pressing the power on button resulted in the power LED coming on and the CDROM activity LED flashing once or twice with no video of any kind, no sounds from the speaker, no hard drive activity. The charging function and power off (hold the power button for 10 sec) worked OK. The problem was initially quite intermittent and cycling power several times would eventually result in a successful boot to Windoze. If it booted OK it would run fine until powered off. Eventually it wouldn't power up correctly no matter how many times I tried.

Cure:

The tech said he replaced "the chipset" which I assume means the combo CPU support, north/south bridge etc IC.
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Any clue if they just swapped a board? It'd be *really* damn hard to swap those chips on the motherboard..Not only that--it'd be very difficult to just order one.. I'm sure you know that though. Most of those shops just have enough spare parts for enough models to swap about anything and some laptops have multiple boards so you can replace certain portions.
 
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jesse said:
Any clue if they just swapped a board? It'd be *really* damn hard to swap those chips on the motherboard..Not only that--it'd be very difficult to just order one.. I'm sure you know that though. Most of those shops just have enough spare parts for enough models to swap about anything and some laptops have multiple boards so you can replace certain portions.
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I'm quite certain that I got back the motherboard I sent in. And that's about all I sent, the only parts not soldered down I included were the phone modem and the coin battery. With the proper tools it's fairly easy to replace any chip except a BGA and even those can be done with some success.
 
lancefisher said:
I'm quite certain that I got back the motherboard I sent in. And that's about all I sent, the only parts not soldered down I included were the phone modem and the coin battery. With the proper tools it's fairly easy to replace any chip except a BGA and even those can be done with some success.
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Interesting that they can make money doing it. It'd be time consuming to try and do and you'd have a hell of a time stocking all the parts. There are a lot of components with a lot of different revisions and the availability is always very short in the PC world.

They must have some cheap employees. Replacing the entire chipset would be a hell of a process as most of it is some form of uBGA. You'd have to troubleshoot, remove the components, try and find replacements (very hard) and then start the time consuming process of trying to re-attach all of it. I can't imagine you'd be able to do any of this process fast enough to make money unless they were paying about $1 per hour. Lots of small components and lots of layers in the board. They don't build motherboards with the intention of them being repairable.

All of the above said--It'd be pretty neat if they are actually able to do it. I've just never heard of any shop doing such a thing (vendor, manufacturer, or otherwise) which is why it surprises me.
 
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jesse said:
Interesting that they can make money doing it. It'd be time consuming to try and do and you'd have a hell of a time stocking all the parts. There are a lot of components with a lot of different revisions and the availability is always very short in the PC world.

They must have some cheap employees. Replacing the entire chipset would be a hell of a process as most of it is some form of uBGA. You'd have to troubleshoot, remove the components, try and find replacements (very hard) and then start the time consuming process of trying to re-attach all of it. I can't imagine you'd be able to do any of this process fast enough to make money unless they were paying about $1 per hour. Lots of small components and lots of layers in the board. They don't build motherboards with the intention of them being repairable.

All of the above said--It'd be pretty neat if they are actually able to do it. I've just never heard of any shop doing such a thing (vendor, manufacturer, or otherwise) which is why it surprises me.
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I must admit I was surprised too.
 
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