R51: Inverter or backlight (LCD)

[channum]

I'm about to puke, 4 months out of warranty I find myself typing this on a rather old CRT monitor because my Thinkpad's display is non-functional...

The symptoms:

Yesterday afternoon the monitor started to flicker and dim and then just went dark.

The LCD monitor itself is still 100% functional, with bright enough light you can still see the screen if I have display routed there.

If I put it to sleep or reboot I'll get about 10-30 seconds of backlighting before a quick flicker fest and darkness.

Are there any real chances these symptoms are from a bad inverter or even just a cable seating? I am willing to spend the $100 or so to replace the inverter but am not going to drop $600 to replace the whole LCD display when for not much more I could get a whole new desktop system complete with a 19" flatpanel LCD. I am finishing grad school in 6 weeks and this is the second laptop to die on me. At least this time I'm left with a funny looking desktop instead of a $1000 external drive.

[beeblebrox]

There are 2 potential causes.
1.) the stupid cable broke (happened to me, just reverse... I had to wait 10 Minutes for the light to appear)
2.) inverter failure (highly possible because it dims first and then goes out)

[kyrotech]

or 3) LCD is damaged, kiss it goodbye.

Also, once I saw a similiar problem with a T40, for some reason the LCD cable was not 100% properly connected to the LCD....

you can buy 1) and 2) and will be as cheap as $50. 3) prepare the nice $400 + check