So....what exactly is my issue?

Hi all,

Three days ago my computer got the blue screen of death. It could be unrelated to my issue, but I'm throwing it out there.

The next day when I was booting up my laptop (HP G60 235-DX) the screen was flickering - so I shut it off and back on a few times, then it went away the rest of the day.

After I shut it off for the night and booted it up the next morning (yesterday) the screen was flickering again. Just like the previous day a few times of shutting it off and back on stopped the flickering.

Then about 5 hours into being turned on and running, the screen more or less went black - I'm assuming it's the backlight that died, as the screen has no light - I can only very faintly see the desktop, and even that causes a lot of squinting. Holding up a small flashlight to the screen didn't improve visibility by much. However, here and there my screen would light up again to full brightness and I could actually see - only for a minute or two max, then it'd go dark again. I called up HP, and the support rep said it was the backlight. It's kind of costly to fix, as they'd need to more or less repair the whole screen area.

Is it the backlight or the inverter? What's the difference?

Then today I wiped the system - I figure it's about time I do it anyway, laptop working like it should or not. So far, the screen has been bright while restoring to factory settings and booting brand new. There might be a little flicker/hiss here and there, but it's rather infrequent.

However, with the screen now bright (for who knows how long) I noticed there's this kinda-big black spot in the corner of my screen. If I touch it with my finger for more than a few seconds it is rather hot. Here's an image:



What exactly is my issue? The inverter? The backlight? If it's the backlight, why is it working on and off? Could it just be a loose wire? What caused the hot black spot?

Thanks,
Devin

 

You know, I don't know how it happens, but I've seen some bad backlights where one of the CCFL has seemingly cooked itself, destroying the end of the connecting wire and the heatshrink around it.

You can get an intermittent failure if the end of the wire is just touching the end of the CCFL; I'm guessing something similar is happening here.

 

What would you recommend doing? Tossing the computer or forking over the money to have it fixed?

 

I mean, you could try taking apart the LCD and re-soldering that wire to the CCFL bulb (that usually will fix the problem), but if you don't do it right, you run the risk of messing the screen up even more.

A new LCD looks like it'd cost somewhere north of $70; I imagine a G60 is worth more than $300 these days, so it's up to you if you want to spend 1/4 to 1/3 of the value of the laptop to repair it (and that's not counting the time you spend to install it).

 

I would sell it on eBay and buy a low priced dual core laptop from Best Buy:

Gateway - Laptop / Intel® Celeron® Processor / 15.6" Display / 2GB Memory - Black - NV57H50U

 

I just checked on eBay, and you can buy a G60 for <$250.

 

Whoops, I meant to say I imagine a G60 can't be worth more than $300, which tHE j0KER has now confirmed.

 

Yeah, I'm unsure if it's really worth repairing the computer or not - the fact that the whole screen area needs to be replaced doesn't sound fun, and who knows if the repair would end up lasting...

Thanks for the help you two. Is it a good idea to sell it on eBay? What I mean by that is would someone *actually* purchase a laptop that's semi-broken?

Might as well throw this in - backlight went dark again.

@The Joker - I'd rather stay away from Gateway - my laptop from them only lasted a year, it was quite a lemon.

 

I think you could anywhere from $100 to $150 for it, as-is. My brother just sold his old 2006 E6400 for $110, and it would turn on, but the screen was dead.

If you don't like Gateway, Best Buy has several other cheap, decent laptops.

 

What brands would you personally recommend?

 

I like:

Apple, Asus, Dell, Sony, MSI, HP, Lenovo, Alienware, Acer, Toshiba, and Gateway.

Really though, I'd just pick a cheaper, dual core laptop from Best Buy.

The Asus K53TA is $430 and it AMAZING! It has a quad core AMD processor and a decent mid-range video card:

ASUS K53TA BBR6 Quad Core 2.3GHz 4GB 500GB Radeon A6650 Windows 7 | eBay