Dell 5150 Screen

My Dell 5150 laptop's screen recently stopped working. I go to boot up the computer and the screen is black. There was not an isolated issue that came about where the screen quit and shut down. It just stopped working one day. I am wondering if there are any easy solutions since the computer is no longer under warranty? I also tried to hook it up to an external monitor and was not successful.

 

When you hook it up to the external monitor make sure that it is enabled. There is a fn + ___ key function to enable the external monitor.

If this works, then it's just a bad LCD cable. If this does not work, then that means your video card is fried and you will have to either replace that, or the entire motherboard to get the system fully functional again.

An no, this will not be easy nor cheap if the gpu is bad. A mobo swap requires complete disassembly of the machine and a rather expensive part. You are better off buying a new computer if that's the case.

As for the LCD cable, you can take it to a computer shop and have them do the pretty straightforward fix. It's not nearly as expensive as a new motherboard.