Backlight shuts off

[Martin Ocando]

Hi,
I'm trying to revive my wife's old Presario CQ40. While it looks to be working somewhat ok, the backlight is shutting down by itself after a few seconds. The LCD looks good, but after 3 or 4 seconds, it kind of blinks a few times, and goes black. I can see the display that is working, but the backlight just goes dead. If I close the lid and open it up again, it turns on, but shuts down again in a couple of seconds.

Questions:
1. Do you think it can be just the display lid switch
2. or the LCD inverter
3. or worse, the whole panel, and is better to simply throw it away and get a new one?

Thanks

 

[boosted1g]

1) If just the backlight dead but you can kind of see the display, then it is not the lid switch

2) Woth a shot on replacing the lcd inverter board if you can find it on ebay for the right place.

3) Replacing a screen is not that hard but requires you to have some knowledge on laptop disassembly. If you are not comfortable with this then the replacement will run you around $200-250 parts/labor. You will have to decide if it is worth it to you or not. You can find decent core i3 laptops refurbished on tigerdirect in the mid $300 and new in the mid $400 range. I got a refurb laptop from them almost 2 years ago, only problem I have ever had was because I steped on the power cord while lifting the laptop and broke a DC jack contact (soldered the jack to fix the problem).

 

[Martin Ocando]

Hmm, inverter is only a few bucks, and whole LCD around 70$. I might bring the inverter down, and if it doesn't work, I'll take the refurb route. Besides, bringing more parts down here to Panama, with the extra shipping cost, might end up more expensive than a refurb LP.

Thanks