OK, so I got a GREAT deal on a refurbished Gateway laptop, only when I get it, it's not really a Gateway, it's an eMachine, but it does what I want and I'm initially pretty happy with it. Comes with a 3-month warranty and I don't bother getting the extra year warranty (big mistake - I'll never buy a laptop without the warranty again.) At the 4 month mark, my screen just goes black - all sudden like.

If I look really close at the screen I can still see that the LCD is still working - it's just the backlight that's dead. Not only that but it comes back on briefly (for about a minute) before dying again.  Now, there are basically 2 parts to the backlight, the backlight itself and the Inverter Board that supplies power to the bulb.  A new LCD screen is around $450 (more than half of what the whole machine cost me) I decide that I'm going to try to fix it myself.

My first step is to disconnect the power cable and remove the battery.  I don't want the thing comming to life while I'm working on it.

Next I need to get at the screen itself.  There are 6 screws on the front of the screen (covered by these little rubber pads.)  Then I pop it open with a screwdriver.  Now that's not quite the end of things because the front pannel (with the power button on it) is covering the hinges.

So I flip the machine over, remove the two screws holding that pannel in place and proceed to pop that front cover right off.

With the front cover off I slowly peel the front cover off the LCD screen (it's glued on at the top and bottom of the screen.)  I unscrewed the LCD screen from the case in an attempt to find the bulb.  I couldn't find it and have concluded that it's so tightly integrated into the LCD screen itself that I'm not likely to get it out without there being a really good chance of breaking something, so I'm saving that for later (when replacing the inverter doesn't work.)

So here's the inverter.  It's a MPTN095.  The only place I've found this is on ebay, cost me $40 (with shipping) which is about what I've seen these inverters go for.

Here's a closer look at the inverter  It's got a number of wires going into it, and two wires comming out of it going to the backlight bulb (hiding somewhere in the LCD screen)

A couple more pictures to follow, but the short version is that it worked. My laptop backlight came back on, and it's not flockering anymore (which it was doing initially.)