In most likeliness it's not completely turned off. I remember seeing a dim background (just the light is off and hard to see unless it's tilted at an angle). Is this an actual capacitor on the logic board or are you referring to the LCD inverter board?

Not using battery. My battery died out on me after a little over a year and I have been using just the AC adapter for the laptop all these years (been a good 3+ years). If it's nothing too complicated, I should be able to repair it if I know what's wrong.

The problem has returned after a little while. The thing is flickering now as I am typing this. Really starting to get on my nerves. I want to fix this problem instead of buying another laptop. If anything, I will be going for a desktop this time since I don't really need a laptop anymore. Mainly needed it for college back then...

Usually the LCD inverter board doesn't have big capacitor, but I might be wrong. if you know how to solder, just look for bigger cap on the board, something more than 47uF, then get another one, solder parallel to it. If that helps, then you can replace it. if not, you'll have to try the same for those on the motherboard.

Hopefully those cap on your motherboard or inverter is not solid type. Solid one is harder to replace.

Running the laptop without battery can kill the cap very fast, as it doesn't have anything to buffer the voltage fluctuation other then the cap itself. I did that with my laptop before, after a few month, i start to notice slight flicker at the lowest brightness. Since then, i kept the battery inside (my battery is still working). Dead battery might not help.

I won't be able to reply after this, going outstation for a few days. So, good luck

I don't recall seeing any big capacitors inside before. The ones that I could see all look good though...none are swollen that I can see. How do I know which one is the capacitor to replace? I'm new to soldering but don't mind trying it out since I have the tools around.

I'm still looking for a place to buy the LCD inverter board since I read on many sites that it should be the first thing to try.

OK, I found something that doesn't look so good on the inverter board. I'm attaching it to this post here (sorry about the image, don't have a digital camera at hand so had to use my camera phone). Is that the capacity you were referring to or are these capacitors suppose to look exactly similar to the ones found on motherboards? That black piece shown in the picture seems to be missing two HUGE chunks of wiring inside. It has two gaps there and the only thing remaining in those gaps are one wire on each section. This is definitely not normal right? I guess that rules out the backlight...

I need to find this part as soon as possible but can't find any place that sells them for under $90 or so. I didn't know that this piece cost so much. The part number for the inverter is 71-4200R-D02 and I tried searching high and low on eBay and Google to no avail.

I'm still new to soldering but do they sell that burnt out piece separately so I don't need to shell out a lot of cash for the inverter board? I might as well try replacing that part if it doesn't cost me an arm and leg for that piece also.

EDIT: I guess they call that piece the transformer from what I just found out online. Anyone know of a place to get this specific transformer and replace it?

Goto Barnes and Noble or Boarders, grab a cup of coffee, and see if you can find the Apple technical manuals and repair study aids. Then look up iBook/Powerbook repair. IIRC there should be a list of parts and manufactures for the listed items. Then you can go only and see if you can pick one up for cheap.

Then again, this is starting to kind of sound familar like a logic board issue I had once...

unimatrix, this is a PC laptop. Will this still apply then?

I'm trying to hunt this piece down with whatever information I jotted down from that inverter board, but can't find much so far. Might have to end up paying around $90 for that whole board

Check the warranty of your laptop (if you have one). Like some of the guys said, it may be time for a new laptop. I think it's something with the backlight. Not sure what it is though. If your laptop manufacturer has a customer support line, give them a call. Doesn't hurt to try.

I tried everything already and the warranty has expired already. The tech support for the laptop will not provide much help...as usual. They want me to send it in for repairs at $85 per hour for labor plus parts...no thanks.

At this point, I'm pretty sure it's the inverter board because the laptop actually still has the backlight on at times when I turn it on. I would assume that if the backlight is bad, it won't ever turn on again unless it was replaced.

Anyway, I ordered the whole LCD assembly yesterday since it was for a good price. Will use what I need and resell the other good parts online.

Thanks for all the help. I will post some kind of followup to this once I receive the parts for it.

Hi, sorry for the late reply, just got back. Yes, the capacitor is the same as those on the mother board. the missing chunk in the inverter "transformer" as shown in the picture is normal, it's for isolation, since after the transformer, the voltage is quite high to lit the fluorescent tube.

Just parallel the capacitor you found, those bigger than normal one. If you found some improvement after paralleling it, then you replace.

No problem faulty.lee. Thanks for the followup

I read up on some site that mentions replacing the transformer wires. I saw their pictures and the whole transformer piece is filled completely with all those wires in 4-8 sections. That's what led me to believe that the piece is going bad.

I don't recall seeing any big capacitors on the inverter board itself. Just curious, when you say solder another cap parallel to the current one, do you mean basically making them join together at the joint area? Just want to know what you mean since I'm new to soldering.

Anyway, the whole LCD and inverter board was already ordered and I'm still waiting for it to come in.