MB LCD problem from fall...

Hi,
I hope somebody here can offer me some input on this...

A month ago, I had a little mishap, my MB (1.83GHz) fell down and it got a hit on the upper left corner of the LCD. Immediately it got purple stripes showing in the browser window's gray fields, and when I tried looking at some pictures, they had lots of bright green fields. In the time since then, I have not got to doing anything about it, but a few days ago, it changed, the display suddenly looked perfect. This prompted me to think that the LCD is not shot anyway, that most likely some connection in there has got loose. Seconds ago I again had a few purple stripes showing, but then I grabbed the LCD, with my thumbs on the inside frame and fingers on the outside, carefully pressing a little, which caused it to become perfect again.

Somehow I wonder if the problem is that the "frame" around the display isn't properly set in place. Just after it happened, it did look as if it had come loose, but I pressed it slightly and it looked as if it had popped back in place. When I now had to press a little, it did make a little noise... Could the problem be this simple, or...

I would appreciate any input on this. Unfortunately there are no repair shops here where I live, the only option would be to send it off, which may take quite a while (had to send an iBook there previously, took them 4 tries and 4 months to fix a simple backlight problem). If it is possible to handle myself locally (or maybe see if I can find somebody in the local user's group who can help me?), I sure would prefer that...

Thanks a lot!

 

it could be. just as you said, the frame is misaligned.

is this the plastic macbook?
does it looks like the screen is pressured before you 'fix' it?

its hard to say what the problem is, since there is no photo.

in any case, if it doesnt show anymore problem, then you fix your display, if it fell and got hit sufficiently hard to cause that problem, then i would be most worried about the harddrive and the ccfl (light) tube inside your display.

it is unlikely there is a loose connection.

anyway, if it does shows anymore problem, your best bet is taking it to the apple repairer. or replace the laptop since the fix might be very expensive...

 

most likely a loose connection... or a minor break in circuitry that controls it... not something easy to troubleshoot and find out without disassembling the screen.

 

Thanks a lot, wobble and doh!

When it happened a month ago, I uploaded some pictures on imageshack. You can find them here - as you can see, it really didn't look pretty!

Right now it looks perfect, but now and then since it suddenly changed for the better, I see a bit of purple or green, nothing like on those pictures anymore though, more like some single green dots here and there and e.g. 3-4 light purple stripes on browser window gray fields.

Wobble, I'm afraid that I don't understand what you mean by the screen looking pressured, but I have not been able to see any changes on it except for the purple and green fields. I haven't seen any bulging or anything like that, if that is what you meant.

This is the white 13" plastic Macbook, with the 1.83GHz Intel-processor. I have had Apple laptops since 1992, and always been so careful to be sure they shouldn't be damaged, so I couldn't believe that I managed to have this accident. Won't happen again though, that's for sure! A while ago, the harddrive suddenly broke, out of the blue. Understood from some posts online that this has been a problem with these. I had just replaced it (did it myself, my first time doing something with a computer ever!) when this happened...

I'm really afraid re. taking it to the Apple laptop repair place (Apple outsourced it to another company), as there is no such thing locally, it has to be sent away and I had a bad experience using them before. There is a local shop, but for some reason they are not allowed to touch laptops, those are repaired at only one place in the country (Norway). Back when the backlight died on my iBook 2-3 years ago, it took them 4 months and 4 times to get it fixed, the last time I had to send it back only because they had been sloppy and hadn't put the frame around the display on my iBook back on properly. Probably took them 2 minutes, but the local place weren't allowed to even do that (would think they could have done it while I waited, but)... They were told beforehand that it no doubt was the backlight that was the problem, but instead of changing that, they first changed almost everything else but the backlight. They finally changed the backlight on the third try though, but then I got it back without the case properly on, so it had to go back a fourth time. Every time it obviously ended out back in line, waiting for it's turn - very frustrating. Well, I do hope that they have become better (I did complain to Apple and was told there that they did get a lot of complaints, so it wasn't just me who had a bad experience), but if I don't have to, I won't test them again, to put it that way. Also I don't have Apple Care on this computer, so it could easily become very expensive as the labour is very costly in this country. If I had to change it, I would seriously consider buying a new display on eBay and try to find somebody to help me here locally.

Maybe I just have to wait a little and see how it goes, and if it keeps coming back, try to find somebody (e.g. in the User's Group) who have some experience opening their own laptops who can help me opening it to check all connections and put it back together properly?

Thanks again for any input!