T42p Dust inside the Display - with pictures

[ciorbarece]

Hi guys !

I just ordered a T42P from ebay, unfortunately the unit has something that looks like dust inside the display:

Please click on the pictures:





From outside ist seems impossible to clean it, I tried it with display cleaner. The Notebook is out of warranty, so unfortunately there seems no way to get support from Lenovo.

Whatever it is, it seems to be inside the display.

So, do you see any chance to get rid of the problem ?

Thx

[Johan]

I am sorry to hear of your new T42p exhibiting this problem, and I am also sorry to be te bearer of bad news, but.. unfortunately, dust inside Flexview/IPS panels has been reported by a number of users on the forum - see e.g. the thread UXGA Flexview - dark spots?.

If you Search this forum for "dust flexview" (and check "Search for all terms"), then you will find a number of reports on this problem. To my knowledge, it cannot be easily cured - you would need to take the panel completely apart, which is an advanced operation, and would obviously need to take place in a very clean environment. The thread LCD stains ... but on the inside? (link to pics) may give you some idea of this (see e.g. the post of Mon Jun 09, 2008 8:17 pm).

Did you ask the seller if he/she is willing to take back the "dusty-inside LCD" T42p?

Johan

[ciorbarece]

Thanks for your input, it's very much appreciated !

Another problem here is that the Flexview Display seems yellowish, for example the menus here on thinkpads.com are displayed in turqoise and not in blue

My T40 shows a clear blue. Even by playing with the color management of the graphics card it is impossible to make the flexview show blue as blue, which is very dissapointing. I already researched by now that this is pretty normal on flexview panels, which shocked me quite a bit to be honest.

From my point of view the flexview is really poor when it comes to adequate displaying of colors. Red also look kind of orange. This display just sucks !

I can send the unit back to the seller, and I will surely do that. Do the SXGA Flexviews suck as well ?

Thx

[Johan]

Another problem here is that the Flexview Display seems yellowish, for example the menus here on thinkpads.com are displayed in turqoise and not in blue.

Without being an expert, it could seem to me that the backlight in your LCD (the so-called CCFL - "cold cathode fluorescent lamp") is dying... this will gradually happen after some thousands of hours operation. The cure is to mount a new CCFL. This, however, is not something everybody want to try for themselves - as it is a very delicate operation! If you had been in the USA, I would strongly have suggested to contact forum.thinkpads.com member jamiphar (James Arndt) who has earned a very fine reputation for replacing CCFL's in ThinkPad's - see James' add here: LCD CCFL Backlight Repair/GPU Rework - I'll fix it for you!.

What you experience (with respect to the colors fading etc.) is not specially associated with UXGA FlexView displays... it will occur similarly for SXGA+ FlexView's.

Before buying a T42p (again?), I would like to point your attention to the thread Would u say that a used T42P is reliable ? + Things To Check and the links pointed to therein. I would personally highly suggest/recommend buying used ThinkPad's via trusted members on this forum - via the Marketplace.

If I were you, I'd surely say: Return the T42p you have received... there are better units around.

Johan

[ajkula66]

Your FlexView seems to be in the poor shape, yellowish signs of aging are a clue that it hasn't been treated properly, or was defective to begin with. And this is NOT normal for a FlexView, take it from someone who has been through literally hundreds of them and counting...

If you do a little research here, you'll find out that the consensus is pretty much that FlexView LCDs, although not perfect, were the best ones available on any laptop, EVER.

Return your unit to the seller.

Take a few days to re-evaluate your priorities and your options.

If you ever decide to purchase a very good-to-excellent ThinkPad with a FlexView LCD, feel free to drop me a PM.

[ciorbarece]

In the german thinkpad-forum some owners of flexview-tps told me that it's pretty normal that the Flexview doesn't display the colors properly and has a yellow tint, which was really shocking to me. One guy has 5 Flexview TPs and says that 2 of them are yellowish.

I don't know, some people say it's normal, some say it's not, and some people don't even care. But if a display tells me that blue is turqoise then I have to say it's rubbish, so I'll send my T42p back.

I did some reserch before buying, and the flexview was the only reason why I decided to upgrade from my T40. I did that because I wanted the TP quality with a nice screen, so the Flexview seemed ideal for me.

I really hope that that isn't normal for a flexview, although like I said some people told me that a yellow tint is pretty normal for a flexview, which is really hard to believe.

My priorities are simple: I want a T4x with an nice screen. It doesnt't have to be a T4xp. The ideal TP would be a T42 with a good Flexview screen, and I would prefer SXGA over UXGA. But the screen should display the colors correcty, not like the unit I got here.

If you have a flexview display, please write here if you see the nice page we have here in blue or in turqoise, it would be very much appreciated !

Thx, Chris

[Troels]

Depending on the location of the dust specs, i'll bet it will always irritate you very much to no end.
Like pressure marks (dark spots) , it will always be there, no matter what you do.
I can say now, that it does not matter if it's from IDtech or Boe-Hydis... i have small dust specs in them all, but at least they move around from time to time in the Boe Hydis LCD, but these are dust specs at the size of 1 pixel.

The salesman or seller should have pointed this defect out to you. I'm hoping to find some sort of reasonably priced service, which is highly reliable, that could open these LCD panels without breaking the row and col driver bonds. If Jamiphar could offer such a service it would be great... but it must be a very stressful job to do

The yellowing occurs because of the CCFL getting old. Compared to larger ccfls found in furniture lights, it yellows fast. Some backlights do not turn as yellow with time, but loses their brightness fast instead.
Yellowing can also occur to any LCD if it was placed in direct sunlight for too long - this also fades the colors.

[ciorbarece]

My T40, which is 1.5 years older that the t42p, shows the colors correctly and without a yellow tint.

I've been using that notebook every day for many many hours, so it puzzles me that the t42p's display is much more worn out than the T40's. It seems to me that the flexview panels age much faster than an ordinary screen.

I guess you have to be very lucky indeed to find a good flexview screen in a used thinkpad.

[Troels]

Blue, with no hint of torqouise on a boe-hydis flexview UXGA.
Looks nearly the same on a SXGA+ Idtech flexview, but not as deep blue.
The boe-hydis comes closest to a Dell P791 triniton 17" CRT at factory settings.
Both are using the flexview monitor profile.
I can post some pics, but not sure how easy it is to spot from them.

[ajkula66]

Out of 7 FlexViews that I currently have in my house, ranging from a 2002 A31p to a 2006 X60T none has yellowish tint or anything close to it.

Two of them do have some dust specs stuck behind the LCD, though.

[ciorbarece]

Thx for your input ! But don't bother about pics, my flexview would display them as turqoise anyway.

Mine shows everything that should be blue in turqoise, the only blue thing on this page are the hyperlinks.

Is it possible to correct such an issue with monitor calibration gear ?

[wearetheborg]

None of the flexview screens I have encountered have a yellowish tint. If anything, the whites are whiter than normal screens.
The older screens may not be as bright, but still its quite white.

[ciorbarece]

I don't know, in a german forum I foud out that IPS Panels display the colors a little different than normal TN-Panels like the one in the XGA T40. The Flexview should display the colors more realistic, but it's common that the colors might appear a little bit strange at first. According to some people it's not the flexviews that are too yellowish, it's the TNs that have a slight blue tint. The IPS should also be able to display more nuances of a single color.

TN is cheaper and faster than IPS (Flexview), so most stuff is created on TNs for TNs, so that could explain my problem.

But then there are Flexviews that display this site here as blue, and mine shows it in turqouise, so I don't know what to think. And there are some people who had a yellowish flexview, who got their screen exchanged and it was okay then, and some people got another screen and there was no difference.

This is really strange. I think that some monitor calibration gear could be very helpful, otherwise I don't know what to think.

Well, at least I found out that LCDs are not all the same, and there are quite some differences in the way they display the colors. Even between TNs from different manufacturers display colors differently. And it's a thing that cannot be changed by playing with the graphics card driver, because it is impossible for me to get the Flexview to display the site here in blue.

My first TP was a R51, after that one came the T40. At first impression the T40 was yellowish as well, thought not as much as my T42p is compared to the T40. Both the T40 and the R51 had XGA Screens, the R51 being 15".

Maybe screen calibration is the only solution after all.

[fcampbel]

My T42p developed spots like that several years ago. First one, then a whole flock of them, right in the center of the screen. I used a very powerful magnifying glass to assure myself that they were not caused by bad pixels. To me they looked like shadows from something on the back of the panel. The are most visible when I am viewing something with a white background. There are several sites on the internet that tell you how to disassemble the LCD panel of a laptop to replace the light. Someday I'm going to get brave enough to try it. Maybe I can make a small hole in one edge and spray in some canned air and see what that does.

Right now I'm waiting for a new power inverter for it. I'm on my way to search for a thread that discusses replacing those.

[ciorbarece]

Could you post some links to the sites where you can see how they disassemble an LCD ? That would be very nice.

I've got this one, it's a Dell though:

http://www.laptoprepair101.com/laptop/2 ... cd-screen/

Doesn't look that hard, should be manageable.

I also decided to keep the T42p, I got it at a very fair price (350€ with Multiburner and a new battery), and it's worth keeping. I'm also planning to open my LCD to get the dust out.

Maybe I'll take some pictures then.

[Tim M]

My T42 is over three years old with nearly daily use and the FlexView screen has no yellowish or bluish tint. The CCFL remains good as well (I usually don't have the brightness level at the highest setting). As others have already stated, I suspect your difficulties are due to a bad CCFL and not to some intrinsic deficit in FlexView technology.

[ciorbarece]

Well, when I work with the t42p for a couple of hours and then go back to my t40, then the t40 apprears to have a blue tint.

It might have something to do with the fact that the flexview has a different color temperature setting, which should be at about 5000K, whereas normal displays are set to 6500K.

This means that the flexview display should look warmer.

Anyways, without proper calibration it's nearly impossible to know if a display shows the colors correctly. I will purchase spyder in the near future in order to do that, but first I have to get another mini pci wlan card because the intel 2100 is rubbish.

P.S. NBM Keyboards are the best.

[ciorbarece]

Maybe someone will be interested in this, so I decided to write my solution for the yellow tint:

You have to set the gamma for the colors yellow AND red down, at about 0.80 in the graphics card settings.

My problem was the red color. Because red always looked a little bit like orange, I thought that it would be useful to rise the red gamma, but that was wrong, you have to lower the red gamma to get an appropiate red color.

After all my screen looks okay.

Thx to everybody for your support.

[goofyGAguy]

You have to set the gamma for the colors yellow AND red down, at about 0.80 in the graphics card settings.

What video card are you running? Mine only has options for red, blue and green?

[ciorbarece]

Oops sorry, of course I meant green and red

[Izzyzx]

I beleive these spots are what is called "Gap Mura" : Damage to the LCD panel, caused by exposure to mechanical stress. Gap mura is unrepairable and will grow with time...

Izzyzx