Issue upgrading my T420 to a 1600 x 900

[reZ]

Hi all,

I've got a small story to share about my experience about upgrading my T420 screen and need some advice at the moment.

I've had my T420 since new and loved it, the only thing it was missing was a higher res screen. I did some research and found that it should be a straight swap, no new cables etc required. I purchased a 1600 x 900 screen off ebay and once i fitted it I had an issue. The screen was very bright and had vertical lines throughout it. After a while the screen turned dark. Did some more research and found that most likely a cap had blown (apparently they blow pretty easy on the T420) Luckily I shipped it off to Lenovo and they replaced the motherboard. In the mean time I contacted the ebay seller and returned the item - assuming it was an issue with a cheap screen.

A couple of months later I left my laptop on the roof of my car, it was open and running and flew off my roof @ 70kph. Upon retrieval the screen was smashed, outside the frame along with the keyboard etc. Took it home and plugged it into an external monitor, I ran some quick scans on the SSD and the HDD in my dvd drive bay, they where both fine. The laptop had landed directly on the main HDD slot (lucky to have SSD there) My HDD had a lot of uni work stored in the form of Virtual machines, so it wasn't that easy to backup without USB 3.0.

I ordered a cheap replacement screen (1366 x 768) off ebay to give the laptop life again, this is a terrible screen although it worked - the main thing. Not to long I purchased another 1600 x 900 screen from laptopscreen.com (heard they where very good) When i was trying to replace it i noticed my video cable to the screen was slightly bent (most likely caused by the fall, although screen worked fine) I plugged my new screen in and came up with the same issue as before!! I was considering purchasing another video cable online although I doubt that will fix anything as it didnt work before any ideas?

4177 - CTO

Cheers, John

[RealBlackStuff]

The HD (1366x768) and HD+ (1600x900) each use a different LCD-cable, hence the stripes.
HD needs 04W1617, HD+ needs 04W1618

[reZ]

geez, i've pretty much posted on every ThinkPad discussion board and people have told me you dont need to change the cable or anything!

Thanks heaps man!

[Cigarguy]

Yep, I had the same issue when upgrading my T420 to a higher res screen. Changing the LCD cable fix it for me.