LCD dim after water spill

My laptop suffered a massive water spill while it was turned on & no one was near to turn it off. By the time I got home and noticed, it was now off, which made me sure something fried.

I took it apart and cleaned it all up. Let it all dry out. It was like a pool of water in there. The water spill was directly over the power button.

At present, the only thing that seems damaged is the display. The screen is very dim. The only thing I'm able to make out is the intel logo at the bottom of the BIOS splash screen. From my reading other threads, it sounds like the problem could either be attributed to the backlight or the inverter. Neither of which seems to have had direct water damage.

Also, when I took it apart I found a black residue on the motherboard connecter to the LCD cable. I cleaned it up.

(It displays perfectly with an external monitor by the way.)

My thoughts are that either the connection on the motherboard is damaged so that it isn't sending a good signal to the LCD or that the water damage on the motherboard may have electricuted the inverter or backlight. Or possibly just the cable itself.

Does anyone have any thoughts on other possibilities it might be or ways i can test this other than just ordering new parts and seeing what works?

This is my laptop this time, K-TRON . We fixed it last month just for me to bust it with water this month haha.

I'd appreciate any suggestions anyone may have.

 

It is possible that the Laptop's LCD lid close switch is stuck in the closed position. In this mode the backlight stays off, even with the LCD lid open. This is to conserve power when the laptop is ON with the LID closed. Check the LCD lid close switch. It is a small plastic pin located close to the back LCD hinges. Try tapping the lid switch a few times to see if you can turn on the screen backlight. If that does not help, then I would suggest to replace the FL inverter board.

(And did you leave the unit upside down (inverted) for drainage, for at least 20-30 minutes..??)

But I think 'Dim' or 'Faint' LCDs (backlight out) [or red or orange display tint], might need backlight replacement....

 

I tried tapping in the little switch and tugging it a little with tweezers, but it made no difference. I may take apart the laptop again and see if I can get a better pull to try that out. I'm thinking that's not the problem though, since it seems to be in the same position it usually is.

The time period between the water damage and my coming home could have been 5 minutes or could have been 8 hours... so although, yes I did let it drain, it may have shorted stuff out & seeped throughout the computer before i was even home. Also i took it apart to the core before powering it back up, to clean out the immense amount of water astill left in there.

Andy do you think it's possible that since the problem happened whilethe laptop was turned on, and left unnattended, the backlight could have blown out without getting any direct water damage?

 

The black residue screams burn out. It's just a question of what burned.

 

Yep. That is the relevant question for sure.

 

Well, liquid tends to pool inside the machine and you can’t ever fully dry it out....You were lucky it was just plain water..
you could clean the LCD connector on the motherboard where the black residue was deposited....probably with canned air or mom's hair dryer (not sure if that is safe to use)

The backlight bulb lights up when it’s getting enough power form the FL inverter board. The inverter board acts as a power supply for the backlight bulb, it converts low voltage DC power to high voltage AC power. If there is something wrong with the inverter board, the backlight will not light up. But in some cases, a faulty inverter board does cause the backlight to function but it is faint or dim....
I would replace the FL inverter board first, and if that doesn't work, then move on to the backlight bulb..!!
{Neither of 'em will be expensive}
And see if you can dry out the motherboard a bit more....Did you get any sort of foul smell from the residue or an other part..??
I guess you should get some advice from K-Tron as well, he seems to know more about repairing and the hardware stuff.. (I'm still a noob when it comes to H/W )

 

Thanks for the recommendation Andy. I might pick up a new inverter on Ebay as that's the solution that seems to fix it for most people. I think they are only $20 or so.

All the water is out, as I took apart every peice of the computer and dried it off. The black residue was on the metal pins, so I cleaned that off with rubbing alcohol and a q-tip.

I didn't smell anything foul .

I did find reminants of the Kool-Aid & Egg Nogg spills that this survived last year though . It's nice to have it nice and clean now, but I just wish it worked haha.

 

LMAO, I think installing a new inverter board will fix it....

Good Luck..

 

greg, you have to keep beverages and siblings away from your computer.

You can test if the backlight is the problem or not.

You just need a voltmeter, and you can find out what is broken.
first, unplug the inverter from the screen. Plug the two prongs from the voltmeter into the inverter (the side which goes to the screen). Their should be a tremendous amount of voltage coming out, like 2500volts AC. It is at extremely low amperage, like 0.001, so its not dangerous.
If you want to be safer, measure the voltage from the intake side of the inverter. The intake voltage should be around 15-20volts DC.
If no voltage is being read from the intake side of the inverter, its not the inverter, which is broken, its one of the voltage regulators on teh motherboard. If power comes out, and you can measure a large amount of ac voltage out one side, and its still dull, than your backlight is dead.

Let us know what the case is Greg, we will help you revive it - hopefully.

It is good that you cleaned the system and dried it. Thankfully it still works and outputs fine over vga output.

K-TRON