Fixing a Dell Precision M60 Laptop

Posted by james on Dec. 3, 2007

8 pictures.

Andrew's mom's laptop had failed, the screen went dark. It would turn on and you could hear the HD going, but the screen itself seemed blank. I say "seemed", because it was actually displaying a very faint image. If you shine a bright light on the screen, you can see the windows start menu. This happens when the backlight is not working but the LCD itself still is. The LCD is like the push-pins on a lite-brite, and the backlight is like the lightbulb behind it. Without the backlight, you can't see the image clearly, but it's still there.

I guessed it was the backlight inverter, since inverter failure is much more common than backlight bulb failure. On faith (since I didn't know for sure what was wrong), I bought a second-hand inverter off ebay (love ebay!) that fits this among other dell models. Once I got it in, I opened up the laptop and tested it with both the old and replacement inverters. Old inverter: dark image. Replacement: good as new!

Price to fix the inverter: $23.99. Not bad, considering that the laptop is fairly new (though refurbished, hence no warranty) and still worth using. So now Andrew's mom has her laptop again.

Andrew also has his laptop that's broken... we'll see what ends up being wrong.