It’s still true to this day that the screen is the most expensive part of a laptop, and replacing it on an out-of-warranty unit is never cheap and never has been.
In addition, replacing a screen on a laptop is exceedingly difficult compared to a standalone monitor. Lots of tiny screws, dealing with a proprietary chassis, probably literally cracking apart the bezel just to remove the panel, the requirement to read a repair sheet just to know how to take the thing apart, etc. Not fun.
In most instances, the best way to tackle a screen replacement on a laptop is to do one of the following:
Option 1: Buy another whole unit exactly like yours, move the good screen to your unit.
As crazy as this sounds, in most instances it’s actually cheaper to outright buy a whole unit rather than just the screen alone. Take apart (or have someone do it) the screen and move it to yours, then call it a day.
Option 2: Buy another whole unit, match up specs, swap hard drives.
This is something even a novice can do. You buy another whole unit that’s exactly like yours, match everything as close as possible (exact-match is preferable), and swap hard drives.
Warnings on drive swapping – see below.
Option 3: Buy another whole unit, match up specs, clone hard drive.
If you’re in the situation where swapping out the hard drive isn’t do-able (like on many netbooks and several Macbooks), cloning the hard drive will work as long as both units are exact-match in specs.
Warnings on drive cloning – see below.
Warnings on drive swap/clone
The single largest problem with a drive swap or clone is that your exact-match replacement unit may not be exact-match.
All laptop OEMs are notorious for having slight hardware changes even if the units were only manufactured three months apart from each other. Dell does this a lot, and even Apple does it too.
For example, in one quarter the units were shipped with Broadcom Wi-Fi cards, and the next Intel cards. That’s a minor change, but on drive swap/clone it means your wireless probably won’t work without installation of drivers to accommodate for it.
If you’re lucky enough to have absolute exact-match units, that’s great, but don’t be surprised if on a drive swap or clone that there are differences between the units you didn’t expect.
Should you run into this issue, your swapped/cloned laptop will still be usable, but you’ll have to spend anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour getting all the changed hardware recognized. The time needed depends on how many drivers need to be download, setup of connectivity to your wireless network (again), etc.
What’s the worst case scenario?
The worst situation is that after the swap/clone, Windows 7 will cough up a nastygram after the clone/swap stating the OS is now invalidated, rending your Windows unusable.
Don’t panic.
If that happens, call Microsoft. Seriously. Tell them your screen busted and you had to move the hard drive from one unit to another. They will reactivate your license and you can go about your business after that.
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I don’t think buying a new laptop just to get a replacement screen is a great idea. If you aren’t happy about doing a screen replacement, take it to a reputable computer repair tech and, if necessary, haggle over the price but it should cost less than buying a new laptop.
If you want to have a go yourself, there’s plenty of help online, particularly YouTube. Just search ‘your laptop model screen replacement’.
I’ve done a screen replacement on a Dell laptop and it worked out fine, and was easier than I expected.
I think next you should do dead hard drives because most people had at least one die this year
Interesting article. It offer a wide range of option on how to tackle the problem. Personally however, I’d just buy a new laptop and use the HD of my old one as an external drive. Seems to me the most practical solution.
I recently did a screen replacement on my Toshiba A505. Ended up replacing the stock CCFL backlit screen with and LED backlit screen and a ccfl to led converter cable. Cost me 190 bucks shipped. It was worth it to avoid spending another $1000 for a new unit.
I’ve done screen screen replacements a few time’s and it’s not really that hard to do if your handy fixing a laptop. I’ve searched on Ebay and on the Internet and I’ve been able to find screen replacement parts(Dell is the easiest I’ve found so far finding parts) at reasonable prices. Usually cheaper than replacing whole unit to swap or clone drives.
When I cracked the screen of my netbook, I plugged it into a spare monitor and turned it into a desktop. Six months later, I bought a replacement screen on ebay but after the cost and time it took, replacing the screen really wasn’t worth it.
Recently, my wife’s netbook developed a fracture in the monitor case, threatening to break the monitor. I was blessed. CompUSA happened to have an exact replacement. I was able to swap out the hard drive and had her up and running in 10 minutes. I was able to repair her old case and fix the old netbook and am using it to write this. Daniel Fisher
Replaced screens on several different laptops, have to say finding replacement screens was not hard. Replacing the screen on the Gateway was a pain though!
Interesting comments/input from readers –
I have an old PC laptop with a very badly damaged screen hooked up to a 21″ monitor and use it
- to watch favorite TV shows via internet (do not subscribe to cable for TV)
- to plug in my MagicJack with cordless phone to pay $20 year for unlimited US/Canada phone service.
- back up and external hard drive for Mac laptop overload.
Very useful … don’t need a second portable and it’s very useful for all of the able.
A very nice unit – a several years old Sharp running XP.