Arfa Daily wrote:
The fact that the light stays green, is a good sign. What you next
need to do, is to shine a strong desklamp or hand flashlamp at the
screen at an angle, after it has gone back to black. If you can then
see an image on the screen, that indicates that the backlamp tubes are
not staying alight. This could well be because either the inverter is
faulty, or that a worn tube is making the inverter shut down. Either
is quite a common fault condition.

Arfa

I was able to see the image on the screen - but the monitor remained
black the whole time (it didn't go back to black).
(I shined a bright light on the monitor at an angle).
OK. Well that tells us that the whole monitor part is working, and the
failure is in the LCD screen backlighting circuit. It is generally a bit
fiddly, but it is repairable if you are that way inclined. Unless you are
able (or want to) just throw it back where you got it from.

Arfa
I'm into trying to repair it.

Is there info somewhere on how to do it?

Thanks for your help.

If the screen comes apart easily, start by examining the backlight tubes. Be
careful when extracting them as they are quite fragile. If any are badly
blackened at the ends, suspect them. It's hard to test the inverter, without
having known good tubes to connect to it. If you have a 'scope, you can get
a good idea by looking to see if you have waveform at the primaries of each
of the tube high voltage drive transformers. If you do get a momentary burst
that then disappears, this could be because the inverter is detecting a bad
tube, and shutting down. You might see the tubes initially flash up, and you
might see one not do so. You can disconnect the tubes one at a time, and see
if that keeps the inverter running, and if it does, you can cross connect
the tubes to the opposite inverter outputs, to prove the drive electronics.
Inverters and tubes are available from a number of sources. See, for
instance,

http://www.lcdparts.net/ccfl.aspx

http://www.ergpower.com/pdf30/cross.pdf

http://www.ergpower.com/

Arfa



I was able to disassemble the front and back panels.

Is the inverter the part that has the power button and various setting
buttons? I was able to disconnect this part.

I didn't see the lcd tubes. The lcdparts.net site didn't have this model
of gateway listed and the instructions for getting to the tubes for the
gateway models they had didn't match.