Satellite A305 Screen Issues

Hello, this is my first post on these forums!

We have a Toshiba Satellite A305 at home, had it for a few years, never any issues. A few months ago, though, someone dropped a heavy item on the closed laptop. Next time we booted, the LCD was cracked and unable to display.

The laptop was out of warrenty, so I bought a new LCD on ebay, followed various instructions online and installed it. It worked perfect for a month. After a month, the screen started to flicker and turn off depending on the angle of the screen bezel.

When I say turn off, I mean that the screen turns black with no more picture. The backlight of the screen is still running just fine - so I don't believe the problem here is related to the inverter in any way.

I disassembled the laptop again, unplugged the video cable from the LCD, reseated it and taped it in (it has no latches on it). Again, it worked perfectly for a while, but the issues came back. Reseating the video cable no longer had an effect at this point. I tried disconnecting and cleaning the cables from the motherboard this time, but that also had no effect.

Some other frustrated users took to smacking the laptop (I winced for fear of the hard drive) but a well placed smack on the left palm rest appears to do the trick decently often. This is a poor way to make the laptop run properly.

Sometimes the screen just randomly flickers and turns off. I have had one occasion where it did this, came back, and immediately blue screened reporting that the graphics controller drivers weren't happy about missing hardware. On another occasion, when the screen came back on, Windows changed the resolution of the screen and seemed to act as though a monitor were completely disconnected and reconnected.

It sounds to me like either the video cables are bad, or the motherboard has issues, but I'm not sure. What do you think?

Have I considered it? Yes. I have actually checked and done anything about it? Sort of... I disconnected the inverter cable from the Mobo and the inverter, and from the inverter to the screen, and reconnected them all, and had no change.

I have done a few days of testing and have erratic and inconsistent results.

At first, I turned on the computer and plugged in monitor, and nothing happened. One of those well placed smacks brought both the LCD and the ext. monitor to life. Then for a few hours, both worked perfectly. I could use the notebook's settings to turn off this monitor or that one, make one primary and the other secondary, extend or duplicate the screen, whatever.

Then I put the laptop to sleep (closing the lid) and woke it up (opened). Both screens would not turn on. I rebooted the laptop. Both screens showed BIOS and turned on fine. Then they both went out. Another smack brought the external monitor to life, but not the notebook LCD.

Again, when I say the LCD doesn't work, I mean that the backlight comes on but no picture is shown.

Once fully booted (with only the ext. running) I went into the graphics settings and set the ext. monitor as primary and to duplicate onto the LCD. No change. I then set the LCD as primary and the monitor as secondary, and they both went black. No change (such as Function, Screen Change on the keyboard) would fix this.

I turned the computer off. The monitor entered low power mode. I turn the computer on. The external monitor lights up as though it received SOMETHING but then says 'no signal found' and the laptop LCD was blank. Another smack - and bam, everything works perfect again.

Half the time it's like none of the displays work, a quarter of the time like only the laptop doesn't work, and a quarter like everything works perfect...

I just disassembled the whole laptop last night. By whole, I mean I had it in pieces to the point where the motherboard will still in the chassis, but I had disconnected every cable relevant to the screen (and more). At the very least, I had disconnected:

• The data connector to the back of the LCD
• The LCD-side connector to the inverter
• The mobo-side connector to the inverter
• the data and inverter cables from the motherboard
• other misc. cable connections like keyboard and touchpad.

I cleaned all of the connectors and cables and sockets with q-tips with some rubbing alcohol, let it dry for an hour and then reassembled the machine. I made sure to fully and securely push the connectors into their respective sockets.

Upon boot, the screen did not come on. Tilting the angle of the screen brought up the boot screen for Toshiba, and I watched the laptop boot into Windows. Everything worked fine, so I tilted the screen back and forth, and watched as the screen went black - then random bars of colors, then black - then occasionally to the intended Windows screen.

This is the same problem as before - so either I am poor at reassembling the laptop, or there's something else up, as every connection has been cleaned and reseated and the issues persist.

I bought and today received a new (to me) cable for this laptop. I took the whole thing apart (for the 12th time or so) and put the new cable, in, reassembled it and fired it up.

No screen, no backlight, no nothing.

Tomorrow I'll disassemble it AGAIN and put the old cable back in. If I get the old results, then I'll assume this new cable is bad. If I have the same poor results, then I really have no idea what to do anymore.