broken lcd or cable or...?

[meeotch]

I successfully replaced the backlight in my trusty old w500 just now. And then, like a dumbass, I realized there was some dust trapped in the screen, and opened it up one more time to clean it - in the process totally borking the lcd.

My question to any gurus out there: Should I now try to replace the LCD, or the LCD cable, or something else? On boot, the screen lights up and keeps getting brighter until it's a dim grey-blue. I.e., brighter than a blank screen, but with nothing displayed - no Thinkpad logo, POST, etc. On reaching the Windows welcome screen, I get a bunch of vertical stripes. Connecting it to an external monitor, everything works normally.

From the above, I feel that it's not the backlight or inverter, nor the graphics card or motherboard.

boot:


windows welcome screen: