5315... bad mobo?

Im saddened to write that my beloved 5315 that I bought 4-5 years ago and was one of the first few on the site to do a core 2-duo processor swap, might have finally crapped the bed

To make a long story short, out of nowhere the laptop started shutting off if I flexed the body of it at all (i.e. picking it up, out of its protective leather case). At first I thought it was the power jack, which Ive replaced 2-3x over the years myself....

But this time was different. With the ac plug in the back, the green light would be on in the front. Once I pressed the power button the light would go out and all the lights would flash. If you rap on the body of the laptop, the laptop will power but no screen, it lights up a little but stays black. You can hear the computer booting in the background (windows noises through the speakers, etc).

Ive completely disassembled the laptop, its in a heap of parts and about 3 cups of screws right now, lol. I took out the processor and reseated it, reseated the RAM, checked all of the connections, played with the monitor cable a bit - still same problem. I can smell that "burnt electronics" smell back by rear left part of the motherboard

I read up on BGA failures and broken solders... is that what Im looking at here? I'd be bummed to scrap out my 5315..... Any tests or verification I can do to diagnose this?

 

Hrmmmmmm....

Today I took a "poke around"...after all, its been 3-4 years since Ive opened this bad boy up.

Unplugged all of the ribbon cables, reconnected them. Put everything back together and now the computer starts up fine, but the screen is blank. Blank as in, I get backlight but no picture. I hooked it up to an external monitor and it works fine that way.

I havent dropped it or anything to necessitate a bad lcd. BUT does this sound like a screen inverter failure?