green vertical line

Pedroski · 01-24-2014, 06:20 PM

Just came back from a little visit to England and now I have a thin green line running from top to bottom on my laptop display.

Is this a screen fault, a loose wire, or a GPU fault? Is it something that can probably be rectified?

frankbell · 01-24-2014, 07:57 PM

Try booting from a Live CD of something other than the distro you are using. If the line is still there in the same place, it's almost certainly a hardware problem.

My best guess tells me the screen has been flexed and damaged in some way, but that's just a guess.

Pedroski · 01-24-2014, 08:39 PM

I get the line from boot, and I did start Win to see if it was also there. It was.

Time for a new laptop?

frankbell · 01-24-2014, 08:49 PM

Sounds like.

Unless it's really new, it's probably not worth getting a new screen, unless you want to try installing it yourself; unless it's a really high-end machine, having a repair shop replace the screen will likely almost as much as a new laptop. There are tutorials on YouTube about that.

If you know a trustworthy repair shop, it might not hurt to get an estimate.