Vaio screen keeps turning black, black, black!

[Glennski]

O mighty laptop wise ones, I humbly approach your screen with my sad story:

I just inherited someone's older Sony Vaio PCG-F280... and BLACK seems to be the preferred color of the screen these days. I tried resetting everything to factory settings but nothing seems to work. Here are symptoms and clues:

SYMPTOMS:
- You can boot it up and work on it for about FIVE minutes tops. At that point, the screen will go black except you can dimly see some functions still taking place on the screen.

- Sometimes, all you get is a quick flash of SONY and that's all she wrote and black is the rest.

- Sometimes it works perfectly, but only very rarely; when it does, it'll work for HOURS on end no problem.

CLUES:
- It needs a new battery and is running on AC power.
- It runs Windows 98.
- The hard drive apparently has a partition (i.e. a C drive and a D drive)
- Turning off all power management (e.g. not allowing hibernate, standby) has no effect.

QUESTIONS:
- What are the easiest tests to try? Tonight I'll try hooking it up to a standard monitor to see if it still has output there. But then what?
- Is reinstalling Windows of any value? There's no valuable data on the thing and if the data gets wiped out, no big deal.
- Should I believe all the folks on the Internet who trash Sony up, down, and sideways for making a crummy product? Just reporting what some of the other forums are saying.

Thanks folks.
- Glennski

[Airman]

Well the problem is either your LCD backlight inverter or the backlight itself. This is a hardware issue that you would need to have fixed. The LCD Inverter is what it sounds like, they burn out all the time it is very common. They range in cost from about $25-$75.

[Glennski]

Thus spake Airman: "The LCD Inverter is what it sounds like, they burn out all the time it is very common. They range in cost from about $25-$75."


Thanks, do you or anyone know a good parts source, have been coming up empty with the usual Google search. Best, Glennski

[Airman]

I usually use Ebay for parts, I've repaired like 4 of my friends older laptops that had this problem, and also one of their LCD monitors. only one of those times it was actually the backlight itself. It's fairly simple to do yourself if you aren't scared of getting shocked and are decent with taking apart electronics.

[Glennski]

Ebay it is, off I go, thanks! -g.ski