problems with dell inspirion 1520 lcd

My brother's laptop is having mental issues. The lcd turns off whenever it wants, but the image is still barely visible if tilted at the right angle with the right light. I had him move the monitor up and down and he said it would intermittently come back on. I had a friend who had this same thing happen, and he said the easiest way to cure it is to buy a new LCD off ebay. Are all, or even some of the lcd's available on ebay a dell part, or are they made from a knock off company?

 

Sounds like the cable or inverter is faulty but the LCD is still alright.

 

Alright, i just ordered an inverter on ebay, and if that doesnt work, i'll move onto the cable.

 

ok, i ordered this part from ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=230330661242

it's listed as a 1520 inverter board, it looks identical to the one i'm looking at, but i have problems. I wasnt able to figure out how to remove the old board from the monitor, so i unplugged the two cables going into it and plugged them into the new one, tried starting it, and got nothin on the screen. i plugged the old one back in, and it turned on, and went back and forth several times, never being able to get the new one to work. but now, i think i screwed up somethin, and not even the old one works.

any ideas on what the hells goin on? this is my brother and his wife's laptop, and they need it asap for at home classes they're taking. any help is much appreciated. i wont be back til about 1am central, work blows

 

No love?

I was playing with it some more tonight. I have it hooked up to my external monitor with a vga cable, which i use on my own laptop without any problem. I'll hook up the problem laptop, and the picture will come up every time, but after a couple minutes it will cut out and wont come back.

another thing that's weird, all but 5% of the picture will show up to one side of the screen, and the other 5% will show up, but on the opposite side of where it should be. so the very right side of the picture is showing up on the very left side of the screen, with a black area separating the two areas.

im completely clueless with whats goin on here.

edit: i'm seriously considering just buying a whole new lcd. i couldnt get the new inverter to work at all, but when i plugged the old one back in, it would work for a few minutes, nor could i even get the old inverter to separate from the LCD. it looks like theres 4 or 5 rivets holding it together.