HomeIn this tutorial I’ll explain how to remove LCD screen and replace inverter board in an Acer Aspire 5100 laptop. This tutorial will work for many other Acer laptops with the same body.
In my previous article I was taking an Acer Aspire 5100 apart.
OK, let’s get inside the display assembly.
First of all, turn off the laptop, unplug AC adapter and remove the battery.
The screen bezel has four screws hidden under for seals. Two rubber seals on the top of the bezel and two plastic seals on the bottom.
You can remove all four screw seals with a sharp object as it shown on the picture below. Glue removed seals somewhere on the bezel so they don’t get lost.
Remove four screws found under seals.
Start remove the screen bezel with your fingers. Proceed slowly while removing the bezel.
Continue removing the screen bezel.
The bezel has been removed.
The inverter board is mounted below the laptop screen. If you are replacing the inverter board, you’ll have to separate the top cover from the screen first.
Remove four screws. Two of them securing display hinges and other two securing the inverter board.
Carefully separate the display cover from the screen and access the LCD cable connector.
You’ll have to unplug the LCD cable from the screen.
First, unglue the clear sticky tape securing the connection.
Second, unplug the LCD cable from the connector on the screen.
Now you can access the inverter board witch is still connected to the laptop by cables on both sides.
Carefully unplug cables from both sides of the inverter board.
Remove the screen inverter board and replace it with a new inverter.
Here’s how you can remove the LCD screen.
Simply remove four screws securing the LCD screen to the display hinge. Remove four more screws from the other side of the screen.
Now you can remove and replace the failed or cracked screen with a new LCD screen.
February 15th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
excellent tut.. saved my acer 5315…
thx so much….
February 13th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
I have an Acer Aspire 5100, the LCD was replaced less than a year ago, I have had no problems with it since being replaced (I stepped on the lid, totally my fault) A couple weeks ago the screen had trouble turning on, after a few reboots it would turn on. It continued for a few weeks, until yesterday the screen just hasn’t come back on. I have plugged a monitor into it, and it works fine. When I boot the laptop up, it flickers but does nothing. In your opinion would it be just the inverter?
thank you very much, I find your site extremely useful for this useless computer!
February 10th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Hey, so before the backlight on my lcd decided to not workin anymore, It use to short out (meaning my screen would flicker on and off). I use to have to move the screen around to get it to stay on. Now i turn it on, and half of the screen works for a good 5 seconds then shuts off. I can still barely see that everything is coming up fine but the light will not stay on. My initial guess was wiring, so i took it apart and all wires seemed to be in tact. Im wondering if a new inverter would fix this or if the screen is just junk.
Please let me know what you think.
Thanks
February 7th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Hey! – Just want to tell you, I’ve found GREAT information on your site! I was able to replace my keyboard on my Acer Aspire 3000 laptop in about 1/2 hour!
Thanks for all your info!
Joe
January 25th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Ian Sechler,
I’m not sure what’s going on with your laptop. My guess would be it’s either a bad video cable or LCD screen.
January 25th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Alright,
I’ve removed the hard drive, and attempted to boot several times now. No luck with the display.
Yes, the laptop works with an external monitor, but not the internal LCD.
No, there’s no image at all on the LCD. As I stated before in reference to the small green LED on the lower left of it’s housing, I suspect it doesn’t even turn on.
Is it possible to further nail down what the cause is? Can you even replace the video cables if they’re bad?
One last thing I’d like to note… I said in my prior post that if left alone long enough powered down, upon the next boot, there was a chance my display would return. I think I’ve proven this as a fact now. A handful of times over the last few days, I’ve powered it up every so often and checked. I’ve noticed two things… If upon one boot, the display does not power up, if turned back off, and left alone for say… six hours or more, the next boot stands a high chance of the display powering on. And as I’ve said, once it’s on, it’ll stay on for as long as the laptop is running. Once I power down, if I attempt to boot back up, the display will be gone again. But if I wait those six or so hours… you get the idea.
January 24th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Ian Sechler,
Sounds like you have a hardware related problem and I don’t think it’s related to Vista OS. To confirm that, you can remove the hard dive and start the laptop. If you still have no image/light on the screen even when the hard dive is removed, it’s not a software issue.
So, the laptop works with an external monitor but not with the internal LCD, right? It tells me that most likely the motherboard/video card in your laptop works properly.
Take a closer look on the laptop LCD. Can you see any image at all? If you see a very faint image, your problem could be related to the inverter board OR backlight lamp.
If you cannot see any image on the laptop screen at all, but the external monitor works fine, there could be a problem with the video cable or LCD screen.
January 24th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Dave,
1. Make sure the new LCD screen is seated correctly and the video cable is properly connected to the screen.
2. Could be a defective LCD screen.
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Hello, I need some assistance troubleshooting just what’s going on with my 5100′s display…
Not too long ago I installed Vista Ultimate, previously I’d been using XP Pro SP3. I had to go on the “great driver hunt” to obtain everything to get my 5100 working again, and as of three days ago, I found the last piece, drivers for the onboard card reader.
None of this is really crucial to the problem, but it gets us to it.
Upon installation, I was prompted to restart, and did so. I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention while it rebooted, but when Vista finally chimed that it was at the logon screen, and my display was still dark, I knew something wasn’t right. Assuming my laptop was once again behaving poorly, I powered it off and restarted. My screen came back. I assumed all was well, and went about my business, then placed it in hibernation, and returned a few hours later, only to discover upon booting back up, that I had a display ONLY until it finished showing the “windows is resuming” screen. Then it cut off.
I powered down and back up, the screen never came on. Several times I did this, never got the screen back. However placing it in Hibernation and resuming gave me just those few seconds of display during boot.
Over the last few days now I’ve been attempting to solve the problem myself with little success.
The VGA port on the backside works. If I plug a monitor into it, it behaves like the primary screen. This has allowed me to discover that my 5100′s screen (when not working) apparently doesn’t exist anywhere. This also allowed me to discover, much to my relief, that the system itself appears to continue working perfectly fine. My display is just off.
Much googling lead me to your page, and others, mostly pointing to bad inverter boards. The person in at this forum has virtually my EXACT problem. Unfortunately a solution beyond possibly sending it in (I’m not under warranty anymore, haven’t been for at least six months now.) and the fact that it could be a problem with my AMD related hardware (I loathe Acer support, I’ve found no documents containing information like this, I’m not even sure where they would be) isn’t available. The fact his laptop is an HP model doesn’t help me much either, but at least the problem is very very similar and contained some interesting information.
All of this in mind, I set back to work on it today.
I initially was going to attempt to reinstall/repair the system, but discovered Vista apparently doesn’t have an option to do that anymore. (I may have missed it if it’s not under Repair Computer) Regardless, I’m beyond thinking this is software related now.
Restarting after attempting this Repair brought my display back. Thinking I may have just struck fear into the circuits of my computer, I attempted several restarts to prove it worked. It did not. But some progress has been made… Unlike initially, now it seems that if left alone long enough, when booted up, my display will work until I shutdown, restart, or hibernate. I’m not 100% sure, I’m not even 50% sure. It does seem that way though.
Following your instructions I’ve cracked open the display. My inverter board looks good, I’ve been lead to believe if it was bad, I’d certainly know about it and be able to tell. All the cables also appear to be in good condition, as does the display itself. While cracked open, I took the opportunity to put the battery back in and power up, just to see if I could tell anything new. The only thing I’ve gained from that, is the theory that my display wasn’t powering up at all is true. You may have seen a small green LED on the bottom left of the panel when it’s on. I’m lead to believe that’s a power LED like on every other monitor, because it was not lit when my display was failing, and was when it worked.
I’ve attempted to research signs and symptoms of laptop displays dying, but haven’t turned up anything useful.
All in all, this has lead me back to your page, posting here for help. I would’ve place all of this in an email, but perhaps other people will benefit from it, and I couldn’t find an address for you.
Do you have any ideas about what’s going on?
Is my display on it’s last legs?
Could it be something else entirely?
The AMD defect perhaps?
I’m going to thank you ahead of time for anything you can do to help. I’d really prefer to not have to spend anything to fix this, and even less so for a new laptop. Nevertheless, if need be, I am considering all my options.
Thank you very, very much. I look forward to your assistance.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Hello, I Have an Acre 3690-2900 Laptop Computer i got from a friend of mine, and for whatever reason the screen got broken, i took everything apart needed… replaced the screen and when i put everything together it only works if i put my hand on the upper left hand corner of the screen and pull it in a twisting motion twords me, as long as i hold it like that it works, the minute i let go of it, the thing goes haywire, can anyone help me??