Water damage on Laptop Screen

Warning: the LCD screen can be easily damaged if you open it up. If you do something wrong the screen might become completely unusable and you’ll have to buy a new screen. It’s very expensive. Think twice before you decide opening the screen. Proceed with your own risk.

To Fix the Problem :

Step 1. Remove the battery from the Laptop.

Step 2. Lift up rubber screw seals and remove all screws.

Step 3. Carefully separate the screen bezel from the LCD cover and remove the bezel.

Step 4. Remove two screws from the front and two screws from both sides.

Step 5. Carefully remove the LCD screen from the cover and place it on the Laptop base. Disconnect the video cable and the inverter board cable.

Step 6. On this model the inverter board is attached to the screen with two screws. Remove both screws, disconnect the screen cable and remove the inverter board.

Step 7. Carefully peel off sticky tape and foil and put it aside. You’ll have to put it back in place during the screen reassembly.

Step 8. Remove two screws from both sides of the screen.

Step 9. Carefully place the screen upside down on a flat surface. Carefully unglued the film that covers the circuit board and remove two screws from the board (top circles). I wasn’t really sure if I have to remove screws on the bottom, so I removed them just in case. Do not touch the circuit board with fingers.

Step 10. After both screws are removed you should be able to lift up the circuit board. Be careful, it’s still attached to the LCD.

Step 11. Start unsnapping the metal frame from the screen. There are a lot of latches on all sides of the screen. You can unlock them with nails or a small flat head screwdriver.

Step 12. After all latches are opened you should be able to separate the screen into three pieces: metal frame, LCD and background (not sure about correct technical name).

If you have lint or dust inside the screen, probably you’ll find it between the LCD and the background. Do not touch LCD or background with your fingers. I was able to remove dust and lint up with a very soft cloth, barely touching the LCD and background surfaces.

After I split the screen I found that the background has a few some kind of optical layers (three transparent sheets) and in my case they were damaged by water. The water dried out and left stains between these optical layers.

In my case removing dust and lint wasn’t enough and I had to go further.

Step 13. Very carefully separate the LCD with attached circuit board from the background.

Step 14. To remove damaged optical layers it’s necessary to remove metal locks on both sides of the screen. It’s like a small clip that keeps layers in place.

Step 15. After I removed both clips, I was able to look between the layers. At first I tried to clean up the dried water marks with a soft cloth but it didn’t help. The stains were still visible and didn’t want to go away.

Fortunately I had another similar screen laying around, it had a cracked LCD. I decided to borrow the optical layers from the cracked screen and transfer them to my screen. I wasn’t sure if it’s going to work, but as I mentioned before I didn’t really care if I break the screen. It was just an experiment.

So I disassembled the cracked screen and carefully transferred the white background and all transparent layers to my screen.

Step 16. After that I assembled my screen back removing dust and lint with a very soft cloth. Breathlessly connected my new screen to the notebook. Turned it on and…

That’s a miracle, it works!