Inspiron laptop LCD Dead?

[bruincal]

Hi, I have an Dell Inspiron 8500. One day, the bottom of the LCD starting flickering and lines starting appearing. Three hours later, the screen turns into this:

http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~frances/laptop/index.html

There's some faint images on certain screens, but for the most part, it's whitish blank. Does this seem like the LCD is dead, or maybe the connection is bad? I'm thinking of taking apart the LCD area to check the connections to the motherboard.

Thank you!

 

[Fardringle]

Wow, that's purdy!

It certainly does look like a failed LCD, but could be caused by a bad connection or a bad signal from the video card. Try plugging a standard PC monitor into the VGA output on the laptop and see if you get the same video problem. If so, then it's a bad video card. If not, then it's either the LCD itself, or the connection between the LCD and the video card. If you feel up to it, you can take the laptop apart and try reseating the connections to see if it will fix the problem.