Screen flashing, scrambled, appears dying; LCD or cable to blame?
I've had intermittent screen problems with my HP g4-1015dx notebook since a few months after I bought it. The problems started out as a shimmering magenta "filter" that appeared over my screen. These problems would usually go away after I powered off for a while, and wouldn't reappear for months. I do not believe they have anything to do with the GPU or motherboard, because external monitors work fine even when the laptop's built-in screen is on the fritz. The problems appear at both the pre-boot screen and after booting my OS.
Lately the magenta shimmering has been appearing more often, until things took a turn for the worst last night. At first the screen appeared to have ghosting at the left and right sides. Now the screen looks black with horizontal flickering lines at first. A faint version of the expected screen (pre-boot splash screen, boot loader menu,Starting Windows screen) appears in the background. After the computer gets past Starting Windows, the screen goes black with no flickering or faint image at all. It does appear that the backlight is on.
From the beginning it seemed like this was a problem with either the LCD, or the cable connecting the LCD to the motherboard. If this is correct (please correct me if I'm wrong,) is there a way I can isolate the problem to either the cable or the LCD? I suppose that I could open it up and try re-seating both ends of the cable, but that wouldn't rule out a bad connector on the LCD or the motherboard. Could the issue also be temperature-dependent?
Is this a good question?