How to replace your laptop LCD

Once you got a laptop of your own, the worst thing that can happen to it, apart from being stolen or blowing up in smoke, is to develop problems that require a mainboard replacement. The next in line is the LCD replacing, second costly repair that you may need to pay for, and today we’re going to show you how to do it yourself. Are you ready?

First of all, you should have the following tools at hand: a small Phillips screw driver, paper and pencil for documentation (or simply a printer with enough paper loaded), and a little bit of tape to keep the screws together.

Now, nobody got its technical knowledge over night, so before everything else, you should take your time and do some research on the Web. You need to know exactly what kind of display you need, so you won’t order the wrong replacement.

Once you have the replacement at hand and you’re prepared, breath in, relax and prepare your laptop for the intervention. Removing the frame can give you more freedom in movement, but you have to write down your steps, so you won’t end up with a laptop having a new display and some remaining screws and other “minor things” that you can forget about…

The frame of your laptop display is held in place by screws that are covered by stickers or cushion tabs, and you’ll have to be really careful when removing them, because you’ll have to cover the screws with them again once you’re done, or risk messing your laptop’s look, and you don’t want to do that, do you?

Once the screws are removed… surprise! The frame from the LCD screen won’t fall off, simply because it’s latched to the laptop frame. Using your nails, you should dig into the frame and snap it off, being careful not to press onto the LCD excessively. The problem is not protecting the LCD, but the frame, since you’ll still need that…

After you finish removing the frame, the natural step to take is to finally remove the old LCD. Just watch carefully and you should notice the screws holding it - remove them, but try to be careful not to damage the connector cable.

At last, the time has come to put in the new LCD! Extra caution is needed not to touch the edge and components of the LCD, so take your time to do it right. This is not rocket science, since all you have to do is place the cable onto the new LCD and put it back into its frame, really carefully.

Now, all that you have to do is go through the same steps you have taken to remove the old LCD, and this is where your pen and paper find their use. Check your notes carefully, and put back all the screws, each one in its place. Once this is done, plug in the cable to the motherboard and power on the laptop to see if it works.

If everything is fine, congratulations! If not, then don’t despair, because the inverter or the cables may have been already damaged, but we hope that’s not the case… and before throwing out your old LCD, don’t forget about protecting the environment and dispose of it properly, at a recycling center!

To find out how to replace the lcd for a specific laptop model check out repair4laptop.org.

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