Hi all,

Thanks in advance for the help. Tried to make this as concise as possible.

Timeline of events:
- 3 weeks, screen flickered upon starting, stopped flickering after moving the screen around a bit.
- 2 weeks, black dot appeared as though screen was bleeding. Black dot was very hot to the touch.
- screen worked ~1/3 times of restarting after this for 2 days
- after this, screen doesn't work at all, can make out what is on it but very dim
(google and hindsight commonsense tells me that there is a backlight issue)
- external monitor works fine

About the laptop:
HP G60 230US, ~two years old.
Pentium Dual-Core CPU T4200 @ 2.00GHz
Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family
Vista 32-bit
Not under warranty anymore

Question:
went to the local computer shop, guy said whole monitor needs replacing?
- is this necessary?
- better to just replace backlight?
- any other fixes i should try first?

Thanks a lot! Please let me know if I should provide any more information.

Depending on what display it uses, it's pretty lavish to replace the backlight. One dust particle, hair or skin flake might kill the display then.

I can't see many pc techies to wear neopren suits and working in a particle clean room.

If they still decide to do it and instead of doing it right and just wipe everything with an towel (it theoretically removes dust or flakes as well) before putting it back together ... yes, all of the small black dots on your screen will stay there forever.

Thanks for the reply, just purchased a new screen.

After you position the new LCD, screw it into place in the metal frame.

So the only problems could be either the backlight, or the inverter? Because I bought a new display that was suppose to be new and the inverter which was supposed to be brand new. I'd be better off buying a newer laptop and saving myself the aggervation.
good luck!

I would say from experiance in laptop repair that it is not the laptop screen that keeps being broken it would most likly be the power socket on the laptop.