Hi
Friday night of last week I was watching the classic 1989 Batman on my laptop and shut it down in the early hours of the morning. When I woke up on saturday morning and switched it on, the screen was not working although there was plenty of activity otherwise. I am currently in France, away from my home (UK) and so I have nothing with me and naturally I panicked. I finally got level headed and tried to diagnose the problem:
So there is no sign of life, shining a bright light on the screen there is nothing. I gained access to an external monitor on monday and figured out that the vga out works so I am able to use my laptop when I have a monitor around. Using this I have narrowed it down to the motherboard connection to my screen, the cable connector, the inverter/backlight or the lcd panel itself. I should mention the laptop is a Toshiba L500-128, a 2009 model L500 with the last of the core2 duo series, its getting on a bit but has been working like a champion nonetheless.
I have been having difficutly diagnosing further because I dont have spare parts to isolate the issue and before I fork out money which I dont have, I thought I would post on here. What I have done however, is found out that my LCD panel and inverter are connected to the motherboard via the same cable, which also connects my webcam. The cable can be found here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/eTrader-Direct-Original-Satellite-L500-11V/dp/B00AYEH2YE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366200795&sr=8-1&keywords=l500+lcd+cable
Now my reasoning was if the webcam still works then the cable should be fine and therefore the motherboard connection is also fine. I confirmed this just before writing this post, I unscrewed the screen bezel and whilst having my webcam application launched I unplugged the connector and plugged it back in to the webcam module and it is definitely supplying the webcam with life implying the cable works. Would you agree that the cable and motherboard can be diagnosed as working? This would leave just the panel and the inverter/backlight. Now here is my final piece of diagnosis: I have a system which dual boots ubuntu 12.1 and windows 8. Regardless of which OS I am in, they simply do not recognise that my laptop has a screen, they just see the external. I have done various driver reinstalls and so on but this is beyond a driver problem because the screen wont even show the boot screen! It only stands to reason that the problem is the inverter/backlight or the lcd panel, but I am leaning towards the inverter/backlight. I dont know enough about this kind of stuff, I have looked at forums and FAQs over the past few days to fill up with knowledge, but this is where I need help. I say inverter/backlight because it seems as though they .."control?"... the screen. So if they are gone, no screen would be detected? I could be entirely wrong so any ideas would be appreciated before I spend £150 trying to get it fixed and potentially failing
Thanks
Friday night of last week I was watching the classic 1989 Batman on my laptop and shut it down in the early hours of the morning. When I woke up on saturday morning and switched it on, the screen was not working although there was plenty of activity otherwise. I am currently in France, away from my home (UK) and so I have nothing with me and naturally I panicked. I finally got level headed and tried to diagnose the problem:
So there is no sign of life, shining a bright light on the screen there is nothing. I gained access to an external monitor on monday and figured out that the vga out works so I am able to use my laptop when I have a monitor around. Using this I have narrowed it down to the motherboard connection to my screen, the cable connector, the inverter/backlight or the lcd panel itself. I should mention the laptop is a Toshiba L500-128, a 2009 model L500 with the last of the core2 duo series, its getting on a bit but has been working like a champion nonetheless.
I have been having difficutly diagnosing further because I dont have spare parts to isolate the issue and before I fork out money which I dont have, I thought I would post on here. What I have done however, is found out that my LCD panel and inverter are connected to the motherboard via the same cable, which also connects my webcam. The cable can be found here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/eTrader-Direct-Original-Satellite-L500-11V/dp/B00AYEH2YE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366200795&sr=8-1&keywords=l500+lcd+cable
Now my reasoning was if the webcam still works then the cable should be fine and therefore the motherboard connection is also fine. I confirmed this just before writing this post, I unscrewed the screen bezel and whilst having my webcam application launched I unplugged the connector and plugged it back in to the webcam module and it is definitely supplying the webcam with life implying the cable works. Would you agree that the cable and motherboard can be diagnosed as working? This would leave just the panel and the inverter/backlight. Now here is my final piece of diagnosis: I have a system which dual boots ubuntu 12.1 and windows 8. Regardless of which OS I am in, they simply do not recognise that my laptop has a screen, they just see the external. I have done various driver reinstalls and so on but this is beyond a driver problem because the screen wont even show the boot screen! It only stands to reason that the problem is the inverter/backlight or the lcd panel, but I am leaning towards the inverter/backlight. I dont know enough about this kind of stuff, I have looked at forums and FAQs over the past few days to fill up with knowledge, but this is where I need help. I say inverter/backlight because it seems as though they .."control?"... the screen. So if they are gone, no screen would be detected? I could be entirely wrong so any ideas would be appreciated before I spend £150 trying to get it fixed and potentially failing
Thanks