Thinkpads Forum

I originally posted this on Reddit. I'm hoping someone here may have the answer though.

tl;dr I upgraded the mSATA SSD in my wife's Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro. After putting the laptop back together, the screen doesn't power on. When connecting to an external display, everything is fine but the computer only detects the external display and acts like there is no internal one.

Firstly, I am by no means a computer technology expert, but I don't believe I'm a complete n00b either. I was using an antistatic mat and wrist strap, and a ground clip during this incident. I've built a couple PCs (way back) in 2004 and 2006; I've upgraded the RAM and SSD on my T430 in the past. Just last week I upgraded the CPU, RAM, SSD, WLAN card, and LCD assembly on my T400. With that out of the way, I messed something up this time.

I attempted to upgrade the mSATA SSD (Samsung EVO 850 250 GB) on my wife's Yoga 2 Pro running Windows 10 using these instructions. Everything went fine until I made what I think is the potential mistake.

I had already swapped out the SSD, put the battery back in, and snapped the bottom cover on. Before replacing the screws in the bottom cover, I powered the laptop on to see if it worked. It booted up fine; I checked to see that there was an increase of an additional 130 GB of storage space available.

After that, (I think) I had powered it down completely before replacing the bottom screws. The screen displayed "Shutting Down" and then it went dark. So I flipped the laptop over and replaced the screws for the bottom cover.

After powering it on again, to my horror I realized that the screen wasn't turning on anymore. I'm assuming I didn't wait long enough for it to completely power down, and I messed something up with the display when I touched the screwdriver to the computer.

I've seen discussions on Reddit about blown LCD display inverters when people open up and tinker with their ThinkPads without removing the battery. Do you think I might have done the same to this Yoga 2 Pro if it wasn't completely powered down before screwing the bottom cover back on? By the way, I also checked the BIOS and read the HMM but there was no mention of being able to disable the battery prior to opening up the computer and physically disconnecting it.

A less likely problem is that I applied too much pressure to the bottom cover when screwing it back on. Maybe that messed with the display somehow, but I don't think so. I also reopened the laptop and checked the LCD connections to make sure that wasn't the problem.

Does anybody have any suggestions on what I need to fix to get this thing running again? I'm gonna call a couple of local repair shops over the next few days and see what they quote me. My wife is pretty upset with me...

Edit: I resolved the issue by opening the laptop once again. I disconnected and reconnected the LCD connections. It's back up and working!

Was there any difference in the length of the screws you removed?
If so, you may have put one or more back in the wrong place and thus shorted or literally screwed up the LCD-connection.

Did you also check the HMM? https://download.lenovo.com/consumer/mo ... ro_hmm.pdf
In there the how-to is also fully described and illustrated.

Hi RBS, thanks for the reply. Yes, I had referenced the HMM before starting. I also kept the different screws in separate baggies for the bottom cover (plus these ones are Torx), the battery, and the LCD assembly. Though I can't completely rule out that maybe I did somehow mix them up.

If I did short the LCD by mixing the screws up, should it have been able to power up normally at all (or should it have shorted immediately)? Because like I said before, the screen powered on perfectly fine before I replaced the Torx bottom cover screws. It was only after powering down and replacing the bottom cover screws that it wouldn't work anymore.