Thinkpads Forum

I have a t60 14.1" SXGA+ screen that is going crazy on me. I am not even certain how to describe it so that I can find the solution via google or forum searches.

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The color seems to fade in and out. If I grab the screen by the top two corners and press away with my thumbs and towards me with my fingers the image is fixed.

On another forum someone tipped me off that the solder joint between the motherboard and lcd connector had probably cracked and the connection was weak now. Does anyone know how to repair this? I am scared of PC repair places because so many have people that don't know what they are doing. I am not scared to disassemble the system and resolder it myself with some guidance.

I'm guessing the panel is sick. If the MB connector was sick, pressing around the screen would have no effect. The first question is whether you have any warranty remaining. If you do, now is the time to use it.

That's the weirdest LCD defect i've ever encountered.
Has it always been like that, or how did this happen?
If it's still under warranty, i'd say let Lenovo - or whoever repairs for them - take care of this.

My only guess is that the lcd column drivers near the left side and middle are half fried, so that the transistors are not turned on as supposed. Could be due to ESD, and the microcontroller either cannot control the drivers properly any longer, and a per-pixel wrong voltage is sent, so that it will either be too light or too dark.
A new LCD will fix this i'm sure, repairing the LCD panel itself is very hard (and expensive), since you'll need to de-bond and re-bond the coloumn drivers from the LCD driver board.

"Weirdest problem ever" is not a reassuring sign. It is unfortunately out of warranty which means I need to fix it myself or fix it for less than $200. Otherwise it makes more sense to just buy a new computer. I have seen this model go for $600 or so on Ebay so investing in a complete lcd replacement just wouldn't be worth it. I appreciate the responses so far.

As far as "how did this happen?" It just started one day. My girlfriend carries it around by the screen alot (much to my chagrin) which is why I suspected a loose connection. My thinking was that placing force in a bad way had caused a connection to weaken. Pressing on the screen then caused the connection to solidify and work. Pure speculation of course.

If you want to sell it as-is, send me a PM.

open it up and check your connectors, it maybe more of a connector or gpu problem than LCD itself.

Since it's out of warranty, I can't see that you have much to loose by opening up the screen and seeing if there's an obvious loose connector.

This is probably a good place to start if you need instructions: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 62733.html

Before you do, you may want to go into your BIOS setup and set to boot on INTERNAL+VGA, so that you can boot to an external display if you can't get your internal screen back.