IBM Thinkpad screen is black even though the fans power on

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Lumberjack_64

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I dusted off my old IBM Thinkpad labtop and slided to power on, the hard drive made it's usual pleasant noise and the lights turned on, but the lcd screen was black and the pc was making a beep code telling me something was not working graphically, I hooked it onto an old tv to test if it was the gpu that had failed or if it was the screen and it worked perfectly on the external tv screen. So how do I fix it, ik its very slow and I cant game or even work on it but its still important to me since it was my first pc, I dont want my first pc to die :( It has windows 98 on it
 
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R4lNM4N

R4lNM4N

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Wow, Windows 98. I can still here the logon chime lol. I'm thinking you're lucky and have taken care of that thing very well for it to still be alive. If it is displaying on an external monitor but not the one on board, the on board one is finally dead. It would be really expensive but you can replace the display on the unit (if you can find a part) or continue using an external monitor.
 
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Solandri

Solandri

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Turn the laptop on, get a strong flashlight, and hold it up to the screen. If you can faintly see the screen image, the backlight for your laptop has died. On these older laptops the backlight is a CCFL tube and power inverter (the CCFL requires a couple thousand volts to turn on). Either or both of these could have gone bad.

They were fairly inexpensive to buy at the time - about $40. Most of the cost of the repair was the labor in taking apart the laptop to get at these parts. But being that everyone has switched to LED backlights now, I can't say how much this will cost you to fix.

If you have an external monitor, you can probably hook up the laptop to that and use it that way.
 
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Lumberjack_64

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I took a bright flashlight and held it to the screen when it was on and its still black, I hooked it onto the external tv again and it was working there but not on the labtop screen, I then pressed the function key and f9 which tuns the screen on and off, it made a loud beep but the labtop scree still didnt work.

 
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Lumberjack_64

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Its not in perfect condition, my sister accidentally ripped off the space bar when she was little, is it possible to find a modern laptop screen of a similar size and install it? It was a 3000$ pc so I dont even want to know how much the screen will cost to replace with the original. I have a horde of old P2 P keyboards and mice so maybe I can turn it into a desktop of some sorts and get a new hard drive and some more ram (64mb of ram lol)
 
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R4lNM4N

R4lNM4N

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Well, you could try googling around for the CCFL (Cold Cathode Florescent Lamp .) Thing is though, we aren't 100% sure that's the issue. If you really really want it fixed, I recommend taking it to a real computer repair shop (not BestBuy or Staples) and have it properly diagnosed. Hopefully you can then find a replacement part and either have it repaired or perform the repair yourself.
 
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