Is this laptop screen ghosting? How do I prevent/fix this?

alphanumeric · 31 May 2013

I've personally never seen anything like that on an LCD screen, but to be honest its hard to tell what's going on from your screen shot. The most common problems are artifacts on the screen. Blotches, squares vertical or horizontal bars on the screen or a completely jumbled image on the screen. A result of a video chip failure. Stuck or dead pixels but those are usually just one or two in one spot. LCD's don't burn in like a CRT does, there is no phosphor. A backlight failure would just give you a black screen. You say an external monitor works fine so odds are its a problem with the built in LCD. You could try and hunt up a replacement and do the swap. I can't guarantee that will fix it though. If there is some other circuitry in between the display and the Video chip not used by the external output you could be no better off. Another option is to just use an external display and turn the built in display off. Maybe it's time to buy a new laptop?

ajfudge · 31 May 2013

@TVebelenn
No, I haven't dropped it. It just sits on my table as it is my desktop replacement. I even rarely close down the lid, only when I'm cleaning it. It has a screen protector which I wipe clean with moist paper towel. Is that bad?

@alphanumeric
I'm actually planning to sell this to but a new laptop. But I don't want to sell this at a bad condition.

Here's another thing I discover: if I turn the brightness down, the ghosting is not as severe.

TVeblen · 31 May 2013

No, wiping down with water-damp towel is OK. But try and use fabric (terrycloth and the like) because paper products contain wood pulp and that can scratch a screen (with some effort). But it is not going to cause what you are seeing.

"if I turn the brightness down, the ghosting is not as severe."
This would indicate it is more likely to be a physical defect in the display screen, all the possibilities I listed would apply.

Have you tried removing the screen protector?

ajfudge · 31 May 2013

I haven't removed the screen protector yet. It' been therefor years now. I'm planning to replace it. becuse there are small debris that got trapped underneath the screen protector.

TVeblen · 31 May 2013

You know what I'm thinking.....

ajfudge · 02 Jun 2013

@TVeblen, what?

UPDATE:
My laptop screen's frame is made of plastic. So it has questionable build. And notice that I mentioned before that my laptop is just sitting on my table as I don't carry it around and that I seldom close the lid. And yet when I was cleaning it today, I found a crack on the side of the screen frame. And here's the weird part, when I put the cracked part back together with tape, the ghosting disappeared. Just like that! Wow!

TVeblen · 02 Jun 2013

I was thinking that the screen protector might be causing or contributing to the problem.

It sounds like you found the cause: back lighting is leaking through the bezel (the plastic frame is called a bezel).
The bezel should snap to the lid if you squeeze them together, but sometimes the little plastic tabs that latch will break off and then it won't. If that is the case then you can use superglue or hot melt glue or model airplane glue to get it to stick together. But use only as much as necessary! you may need to get the bezel off one day.

But if you are going to sell it, this would be a good quick fix for solving that screen bleed.

PS: I have never seen a bezel that was not plastic.