Broken inverter on 6831fx?

Backstory:
The backlight on my 6831fx laptop goes out for entire days, only to come back to life after being off for a long time. It has never come back when left on. It is clearly getting worse so I went ahead and bought a new LCD, thinking the lamps are going bad; the problem still persists, still getting worse. I have a new inverter board (that little rectangular board just below the LCD) coming in from Hong Kong in a week or two that may do the trick.
BUT HERE'S MY REAL QUESTION:
Anybody think that my inverter problem could be coming from where the video cable connects to the motherboard itself? Anybody had experience with either a bad inverter board or a loose video cable?
I'm thinking this may be the cause because the screen tends to go dark shortly after being jostled/ lifted up, but it may be coincidence since it's not always the case.
Conversely, the inverter board's biggest chip looks to have some melted rubber covering a tiny lead that doesn't connect to anything. That lead itself dosen't worry me because I don't see anything it could connect to on the board, but that melted rubber is touching alot of the lead next to it, which is in use.
Any help or thoughts would be greatly appreciated, and sorry for the wall of text.
As a side note, this happened about 1.5 weeks before college started for me, so yeah I hate Murphy and his laws.

 

hi there, i had a problem with an invertor before, mine had screen pink flickering, i believe your lighting problem could be caused by the invertor itself and not the screen.

you should be able to pick up an invertor at a resonable price, i had to replace my inverter cable, but your issue is with light, not the picture itself. Id bet if u get a new invertor youll be fine, to make sure its not the laptop itself, hook it up to an external monitor and see if it works

 

I've got an inverter coming in from China, but until then I have it hooked up to this behemoth CRT from the early 90's. Thanks for the information.

 

no problem , let me know if it solves your problem

 

So the inverter worked for a day and then died. Remember that the problem is intermittent though, and the screen had been working all day before I installed the new inverter so I can't rule out the flex cable as the culprit. Can anyone think of a way to verify if either the cable or inverter are working/damaged? Can I just put an ohmeter against the cable to tell if it's delivering voltage? (Obviously I have never used a ohmeter before.) Thanks again Stephen, I got some good info on your threads about painting and screen flickering.

 

Most DMM's have a continuity tester. You could do a pin to pin continuity test for each pin, but that would be tedious as you would need to flex the cable while doing it. You've already spent quite a bit on a new inverter and screen, so you might be better just buying a replacement cable anyway.

 

Thanks for the advice.