T43 display has very thin vertical lines

[myT43]

This morning, my T43's (2687-D4U) screen started to flicker and now displays very fine vertical lines. The overall appearance is slightly yellow.

Any thoughts on what it could be? Video card? The warranty expired 3 weeks ago!

Thanks!

[Troels]

Hello and welcome.

Are the fine vertical lines there right from when it is booted, or only after some time?

Flicker as in what? Does it sometimes turn black for a milisecond at random intervals?

Does the flickering or vertical lines disappear when you press on any regions of the T43? If this cures the problems, it is due to BGA problems due to motherboard flexing.

Did any accidents happen to it before the defects appeared?

It could be due to overheating, but not if it's there right from when it boots up. One cause could be that the LCD cable has come loose, which can be refitted. The second cause is not reaally fixable without finding someone who can do rebonding of LCD coloumn drivers.

[myT43]

The lines are there right when it's booted and the laptop did not suffer any accidents. The flickering only occured once, then the lines appeared and nothing external seems to cause a change such as shifting it around, bumping it, etc.

Does this model have a video driver?

Thanks for any additional thoughts.

[Troels]

Does twisting the top lid - with one hand at each side on the top of the lid, very gently pulling and pushing back and forth - remove the lines?

I have seen this happen in real life on another laptop which had a single coloumn of red pixels upon boot-up, until the display lid was twisted back and forth so that the single bad coloumn driver could have temproray full connection again.

Rethinking the LCD cable thing. I don't think this can be it, since it is secured pretty well to the lcd with a white strip of strong adhesive tape.

Yes, the 2687-D4U has an ATi mobility radeon X300, and a video driver should be installed to enable hardware acceleration (like dragging windows in Windows should be drawn smoothly on the LCD).
During the bootup process the video driver is not used. All video cards must feature a basic VESA mode. This mode is used during bootup and can be used in Windows, but isn't recommended since it is very slow for graphics.