To recap the saga from $895 of PAIN:

after doing some research into the guts of my laptop, i discovered LCDS 4 LESS had the screen for my laptop at a much reduced though still painful cost of $495. they also said it only takes about 15 minutes to install. so i’m going to do it myself, and then probably put up the busted but working LCD panel on ebay.

yesterday i finally had some uninterrupted time to sit down and take my laptop apart to replace the cracked lcd panel. i found a t40-series maintenance manual online which basically said take the whole laptop apart before doing anything. yeah right.

i skipped all that and unscrewed the 11 tiny screws that held the front plastic bezel in place, which i couldn’t do without first removing the 11 small black plastic stickers on top of the screws (see image below). eventually i got the bezel off (not an easy task), and then had to figure out how to unscrew the lcd screen from the support braces that held it in place. 6 screws later and the whole display unit is starting to fall apart in my hands. this is when i realize removing the whole lcd display unit from the base of the laptop might have been prudent.

i switch out the lcd screens, and suddenly find two hands are far too few when putting something back together. so jane held things in place at various angles as i tried to remember how everything fit back together.

before putting the persnickety plastic bezel back on, i powered the laptop up, and voila! 1400×1050 pixels of brilliance, not one dead or cracked. so the bezel goes back on, screws and stickers back in place, and i sit back, feeling quite smug that i saved $400 by replacing it myself in a little over an hour.

i take a break from the laptop, and when i come back to it 30 minutes later, i “wake” it from its sleeping state, it wakes, and then the whole computer just shuts off. i wonder to myself whether that battery had any charge. when i go to turn it back on, it begins starting up but immediately shuts off before getting to the IBM ThinkPad logo. “cruel gods!” at this point i’m too tired/frustrated to do anything more.

tonight, i decided to take the whole thing apart again (just to see), but this time with the speed and precision of a laptop disassembling pro. after the bezel comes off, i notice that the two wires that i thought supplied power to the lcd panel look crimped. i wiggled them, powered the laptop back on, and the screen started working, sort of.

at first it only stayed lit when i moved the trackpoint (mouse), then later (after logging in–with my fingerprint) it stayed lit permanently. i couldn’t determine a direct relationship between the wiggling of the wires and the functioning of the lcd panel. it’s almost like it took time for the power to flow all the way through the system.

anyway, it’s been working for the last fews hours without issue. i’ve restarted it, i’ve put it to sleep. the front bezel is back on, but not screwed in yet. whatever might have been wrong (any thoughts?) appears to have resolved itself in a very un-electronics like way.