Inspiron 8200 backlight/LCD question

[beatgorilla]

Since I've just finished my new desktop build I'm thinking about tackling my laptop problem that forced me into a new build in the first place. The reason I wan't to do it myself is:

1) Live in a small town and called up a few repair places and couldn't get a straight forward answer. Everybody wanted to hit me with outrageous diagnostic fees and over inflated service fees IMO. One guy quoted me $1000 over the phone and another told me there was no such thing as a backlight!!!

2) I just like to learn stuff. I learned 90% of my basics here. I'm still a novice, but a much more informed novice because of all you guys.

So, my exact problem is my screen began to flicker about 2 weeks before going to an orange screen. A few days later it went dark on me with the orange screen only showing up during XP login and for a brief moment the desktop is first displayed. If I plug my CRT into the external video plug I get nothing, but I just tried with my LCD and I get a picture. Although it was a completely white screen until after I logged into XP. Once my desktop was up on the laptop it took a few seconds to show on the LCD.

I'm wondering if this is just a backligt problem with the inverter doing a "thermal shutdown" (at least that's what I've read somewhere) or should I purchase an inverter, too? Another thing is that I just read another site that said if I didn't want to take on the challenge of changing a backlight I should just get a new screen. Is this right? I thought that the backlight was seperate from and placed behind the screen. Also, I'm thinking if its the inverter than thats really pointless anyway, right?

So is there anyway to test if its the inverter, too?

BTW, I can still see the screen if I shine a flashlight on it at an angle in a dark room. This is what I was doing before I decided to try my LCD on the back video output.