laptop and desktop problems

[subversive]

Hi guys
Hope everyone is well
I know i am in the wrong place for these next questions
but i always find you all so on the ball and you have helped me
a lot with my ibm probs in the past.

First prob, i have a laptop and the screen suddenly went almost black, can just see faint things, hardly anything but it boots up fine. Would this be a problem with the inverter ? Screen was good before this, not even a bad pixel or pressure mark. When i first got it moving it or half closing the lid would give me a black screen but after re formatting and reloading windows this problem seemed to go away and it now has a new hard drive.

Second problem, on my desktop pc i am using a usb telephone for skype and yahoo messenger but pc seems to get confused if it is always plugged in and starts playing mp3 etc thru it so i have to just plug it in and then unplug it if i want to play music thru the speakers. I did not have this problem with the laptops. Any suggestions. This is a pc that i built myself, asus mb

Many thanks for all your help
sub

[sparta.rising]

For the first question, its either the inverter, the lcd cable, or the backlight tube. The only way to test which is to have working replacement components of each and try replacing.

[subversive]

OK thanks but can you tell me where the backlight tube is located.
Cheers

[sparta.rising]

Inside of the LCD panel, they are called CCFL tubes, you can buy one on ebay or ccfldirect.com

You can check for a common problem with the CCFL tube without buying a new one by removing it and seeing if the wire has detached from the tube (often this is at the solder point and the rubber cover is burnt/melted). If this isn't the case, its probably not the CCFL tube unless you get a "flicker" when you turn the laptop on. After that I'd start buying a new inverter, relatively cheap and resell-able, then LCD cable, and finally new tube. But each component is only like $10-15 each, so its not a horribly expensive fix... it just takes some significant labor/time.

[subversive]

Great, thank you very much