Introduction: How to Fix a Broken Monitor

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So I came home one day to find my old LCD monitor would turn on for a couple seconds and black out. If this sounds familiar, try shining a light at the monitor. If you can see faint outlines of what the screen is supposed to be showing, congrats your backlight is probably broken. Here's what you need to fix it:

Broken LCD monitor
Soldering iron
extra capacitors
a screwdriver

BTW: a lot of the times popped capacitors will effect the monitor in different ways. However, if your monitor stopped working in a natural manner (ie. not you punching it in rage) then more often than not it is because the capacitors are broken. Therefore, this tutorial will still work=D

BTWW: dont open CRT monitors unless you know what you're doing...but then you could probably skip reading the rest of this tutorial; they contain much larger capacitors and a new monitor is worth it. trust me.

Step 1: Opening Your Monitor

First step is pretty simple: attack the case with a screwdriver. Since different monitors open in different ways, I can't say much about your's. If you really are stuck trying to pry that case off, before you decide to break out the hammer, try a quick youtube/google search of your particular brand. Tip though, take pictures of all your screws like the pic attached. It'll save you much agony and humpty dumtying later on when putting it all back together again;D

There are a couple wires you may have to unplug throughout the process, and again, picture help a lot especially if you have adhd or like doing a million things at the same time.

IMPORTANT: As you reach the motherboards of the monitor be very careful where you touch. Inside there are often large capacitors that can potentially give you unpleasant shocks. To make sure they are discharged properly, use a screwdriver with a rubber handle and connect the two leads of the capacitor. Chances are it won't do anything, but safety is first as always.

Step 2: Check Out the Caps

So now that everything is opened up, check out your capacitors. They should look flat on top. If the top cross is in anyway bumped up, rounded, or if it completely exploded, now is the time to de-solder those suckers and replace them with new capacitors. You can find new caps online or at stores like radio shack for several bucks. still much cheaper than a new monitor.

Couple notes:
- to find the same voltage and current capacitors, you want to check the side for a #uF (current) and a #v(voltage) 
-Pay attention to which end is positive and which is negative. Again, pictures for security

Step 3: Putting It All Back Together

Now is the time to thank yourself (or hate yourself if you didn't) for taking all those pictures. Reassembly should now be a breeze

Be careful, good luck, and I hope this helps!

Note: if something other than the caps was broken your monitor might still not work, in that case you might have to replace parts, or, worse comes to worse, just get a new one. Couple bucks to try this fix though hopefully won't dig too deep into your wallet=D

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