What do I do when there are vertical lines on my laptop screen?

Vertical and horizontal lines across my laptop screen?

• Ok so, it started about a week ago and it is getting worse and worse. It started of with just vertical blue/blackish vertical lines on the right side of my screen, whenever I bent my screen it would go away, but it would come back if it moved ever so slightly again. Then sometimes the laptop screen would fate into a white state, i'd have to bend it again. Now, today, there are horizontal white lines across the screen. What is it? How did it happen? What can I do? Many thanks =)

• Answer:

  It could be the data cable that connects from the mother board through the hinge and to the screen is failing or the connector at the screen has become loose, but this would more than likely cause fairly thick lines and other visible faults, it sounds to me that it is more likely (if the lines are thin a few pixels wide) that your screen has been damaged or just failing and needs to be replaced. Depending on the make and model, will depend on whether it is a D.I.Y. job or to go to a professional (a recommended local shop or service agent) and how much a new screen will cost, a non genuine replacement screen can be as little as £30 The reason for the possible two faults are, 1. Cable wear and tear and connectors becoming loose, due to excessive opening and closing of the lid, but this is rare 2. Screen damage can be caused by many things, undue pressure on the screen, rough handling, dropping and many more reasons I hope this helps To understand my reasoning you need to understand how the image is sent to the screen to be displayed, this is only a rough explanation to make it simple If you had a screen that was 1280 pixels wide by 960 deep then you would have 1280 X 960 = 1228800 pixels, each pixel has 3 elements (red,green and blue lit from behind by a white lamp) so that is a total of 1228800 X 3 = 3686400, each element has to be controlled separately so that would need 2 wires for each element that would mean 3686400 X 2 = 7372800 wires in total no matter how thin they were that would still mean the "bundle" would be too thick and impractical, so instead the data is sent in block of, lets say 32 or 64 so that would be only 32 or 64 wires, plus one for a clock pulse, two for power an one for sync signal, this is much more practical and flexible, the data is then buffered and decoded buy a small "chip" on the back of the screen, which then sends data to the columns and rows driver chips mounted around the edge of the screen (i.e. turn element 2 at row 586 and column 1056) and so on. if the driver chip or the connection to the LCD layer gets damaged this would cause thin lines (1 or a few pixels wide) to appear horizontally and or vertically on the screen. as I said this is only a rough idea how it works and not an exact explanation. I have replaced loads of laptop screens as computer repair is what I do for a living.