LCD(?) Issue

Well, I've been using my 8790 for over 1.5 years now, always been pretty good to me, except for some artifacting that was introduced fairly recently (solved by slightly underclocking). Today, though I had the laptop on, and mostly closed the screen (not completely), since the cat was around, and he sometimes likes to lay on the keyboard. Went off to the other room for a minute, came back, and had to open the screen. So the cat probably pushed it closed, it's happened a lot. I opened the screen and started using it, and after a very short bit (15 secs or so), the screen somewhat dissolved to white. It seemed to be made better or worse depending on how I moved the screen. It shortly got worse, and the laptop restarted, and seemed to get stuck in a boot cycle (optical drive kept clicking). After a bit I started to smell something cooking, so I shut off the laptop. Hopefully it's just some dust being cooked off, though that means I have some cleaning necessary. Have yet to get it to fully recover, though sometimes I'm able to get it to boot, as long as I don't touch the screen.

So there's something that's causing the LCD to not get proper information. Since it keeps rebooting when the white screen occurs (and I have that smell, which seems to be coming from the rear left of the laptop (around the ports, more around the PS/2 and S-Video than the DVI side of things)), that makes me think of overheating. Though when it seems to sometimes be a function of where the screen is, that makes me think maybe the cable's got some issue and needs to be reconnected or possibly replaced.

I haven't gotten too far into cleaning, as I don't have any thermal tape or anything and am always worried about doing something wrong, though I could see a little dust bunny waving to me from the little window over part of the copper ducting under the plate under the keyboard. (The plate did have a bit of random pet hair and stuff, too, so I really need to pick up some thermal supplies and pry that plate off.)

In any case, I'm hoping people may have some good tips on things I should check out in order to try and get back up and running. I'm hoping it's just some simple little thing and not more-permanent damage.

Thanks for the preliminary feeling. I definitely need to clean out the insides, even if it doesn't turn out to necessarily be an overheating issue.


A few more things as I've been playing with it a little more....

If I can switch the LCD off and use the S-Video connection, then I can move the screen all I like, and I can work on it. But once I let the LCD come on and it does its white-screen thing, then the laptop reboots.

Occasionally I have a black screen (not off, but lit "black"), and the computer goes through the normal boot process. This is where I can hook up the TV and switch it over and use the laptop just fine. If I move the screen too much and let the LCD come on, then it dissolves or immediately hits white and we go through the reboot cycle.

Other than needing to clean out underneath the keyboard plate (if not because it has anything to do with this, but because it hasn't ever been done and I know there's at least some dust lurking under it), is there anything else that might be worth looking at? I'm thinking I may need to check on the connection of the LCD cable, as well, though I don't know why the LCD not getting a valid signal would cause the system to reboot.


EDIT - I removed the faceplate for the LCD, and noticed that in the case where the LCD goes white, there's some slight wisps of smoke coming from what looks like part of the connector bundle that's going through the pass-through into the main body. So something's definitely overheating, and it may be touching the wiring, thus contaminating the signal. Seems that I definitely need to get access to that area of the laptop somehow and see just what the heck is going on there....

I guess one thing I'm nervous about on the cleaning side is that everything that would need to be cleaned is somewhat secured with thermal tape/pads/compound or something. Like with removing the keyboard plate, do I really just keep putting upward pressure on it and it'll eventually come off? Maybe I need to get one of my friends to help me with this, I'm nervous about potentially screwing something up by pulling it off "the wrong way".