Oh No Broken Laptop Screen!

"EEEK!" I shouted as I tripped and fell on my laptop.. (well actually the words used where too extreme to put here). 1 call to the insurance company and I thought, £150.00 excess?! so after trawling ebay (my Dell is the D820 with a 15.4 WUXGA 1920x1200 pixels) there are plenty of WXGA+ (1280x800) screens - i found MCS Technology Ltd who are actually pretty close and cheaper than my insurance excess, that supply spare parts from broken machines..

So ordered another 1920x1200px screen from them yesterday, arrived today. Cant beat that kind of service!

Onwards with the repair.. This is what my laptop displayed after I fell on it..

So after removing the battery, use a knife to prise the rubber bungs (also attached with sticky glue) out of the holes to reveal cross head screws (thank you Dell for not using star headed screws)

After all the screws are taken out, its just a case of carefully prising the front of the screen away from the back.

..To reveal more screws! another 8 need to be taken out before the LCD panel will come away from the back.

Once all the screws are out, carefully manoeuvre the panel so you can see the back, there are 2 cables attached that require a little dexterity to take off.

The larger flat cable has a couple of locking clips that require a firm grip to enable you to disconnect it from the screen.

The smaller cable just needs a little tug, while holding onto the PCB.

Then its to the bin with the busted screen, and giving the new (used screen) a little TLC to clean it. and reverse the above to put the screen in place..

Then replace battery, and power on, hopefully everything is ok.. I hadnt done anything with the settings for my screen, when I took this shot of my screen now back in working condition.

So happy to have my laptop back up and running again!