2005FPW backlight bleed fix.

saltiness

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 17, 2005
Messages
168
I found out about this from this french forum. It involves fixing or at least greatly reducing backlight bleed on the Dell 2005FPW. I decided to give it a shot as soon as my monitor arrived today. Mine had moderate backlight bleed, honestly it doesn't even bother me but I figured I might as well try and fix it...

Here are before and after shots - as you can see the bleeding is reduced a lot, although I think I could get rid of it almost completely if I went back and used more electrical tape but the monitor is kind of a pain in the butt to dismantle. (It most likely will void your warranty as well)

Before
before.jpg


After
after.jpg


Here's how I did it.

First, take the monitor off the stand and remove the 4 black screws on the VESA mount.
mon1.jpg


Next, here's the icky part - you must pop off the front bezel. It's held on by plastic clips. The easiest way to do this that I could find was to go in through the slits on the bottom of the monitor frame. Use one or two thin flathead screwdrivers. Start by prying into the slit and go inward toward the middle of the monitor to get the first clip undone. Basically once you get one clip undone you can just slide the screwdriver around the edge of the frame and pop off all the others. Take care not to scratch the shit out the frame as it is pretty weak plastic.
mon2.jpg


So now you have all the clips undone, flip the monitor over (oh yeah, it's good to lay a towel down so you don't muck up the screen) and pull off the back - it should come off effortlessly.
mon3.jpg


Remove this little piece of metal covering some plugs. It pops off easily.
mon4.jpg


Here are the previously mentioned plugs, the french website called them neon connectors, I honestly don't know what the hell they are for but unplug them anyways so you can get the steel panel off.
mon5.jpg


Another icky part - carefully pull the circuitry off the front bezel. It's glued on but comes off relatively easily - just don't bend it too much. And don't worry - it sticks right back on.
mon6.jpg


Remove the 4 screws at each corner on the sides of the LCD panel. This will allow you to take off the steel apparatus that holds all the circuit boards.
mon7.jpg


As you're taking the steel apparatus off, unplug this little guy under it. Squeeze the metal clips on the sides to get it off. It's nice to have a friend or roommate to hold the steel part while you do this but it can be done alone.
mon8.jpg


The LCD panel reveals its true identity.
mon9.jpg


Flip the panel over. There's a steel frame around the whole thing held on by plastic and metal clips. Take this off.
mon10.jpg


Your monitor should now look like this.
mon11.jpg


Now, for the fixing. Get a roll of electrical tape, cut it in half width-wise. I found this easiest to do by cutting the tape while it was still on the roll with a razor blade, right down the middle. Apply tape to the very edge of the black part of the glass and wrap it around the edge of the frame. I didn't get a chance to experiment here, I just figured it's best to keep it off the black but over the silver. Feel free to mess around here. Apply this tape wherever you had bleeding or just do it all around the egde of the whole thing. Don't worry about getting tape on the plastic flaps on some of the egdes, it won't hurt it.
mon12.jpg

mon13.jpg

mon14.jpg


Ok, you're done fixing. Now put it all back together, remember to plug every thing back in that you unplugged (wide plug under the steel plate, 4 smaller plugs over the steel plate). Stick the circuit board for the front bezel buttons back in place, make sure it's lined up properly. Everything should snap and screw back together easily. Plug it back in and see how much better it is.

Some thoughts on my experience - I only regret not putting tape all the way around the LCD, I still have one spot of bleed on the bottom right. I'll probably end up fixing it later. I managed to undo all the clips without scratching anything, it doesn't look like it was ever opened. Is this all worth it? Who knows. I had fun though.
 
Excellent. You know, you could probably have a nice little business repairing these things. Or maybe even buy returns from Dell cheap, fix them, and resell...
 
Cool post.

I've had my 2005FPW for almost a year now and I just love the crap out of this thing. You can only see the bleeding if the screen is black and the room is dark anyways. I always noticed that I could change the level of bleeding just by pushing on the lcd screen and the frame around the edges. I always thought the problem was the mounting and not the actual lcd screen itself. Now I can see what's going on inside this thing.

They have really nice monitors that aren't put together very well. Kind of makes you wonder why Dell doesn't just engineer them right in the first place, then get some good quality control procedures in place at the factories. So what if it costs an extra 5 bucks a monitor.

Let's hope Dell never starts selling things like airplanes or hospital equipment.
 
Cygnus_X1 said:
Cool post.
They have really nice monitors that aren't put together very well..

Yep. Looks like the backlight bleed issue could have been fixed long ago by a piece of rubber or plastic. Wonder why their engineers never figured it out? Maybe lack of interest.
 
Thanks for the write-up, looks like an improvement over the original. I may try this as well if I end up being stuck with the 2005FPW.

TZ
 
ho72 said:
Yep. Looks like the backlight bleed issue could have been fixed long ago by a piece of rubber or plastic. Wonder why their engineers never figured it out? Maybe lack of interest.

Dell probably just doesn't care to have their engineers fix it. It could probably easily be fixed by making this gray piece overlap the LCD slightly more and maybe putting a black finish on it.
mon10.jpg
 
Excellent post, this should be STICKY!!! Some try this and post their results up here :)
 
Wouldn't this void the Dell warranty?

It seems like too much for to me anyways. I would just call Dell to send me a new one.
 
Yes, as I said it will most likely void your warranty. But it seems that almost all 2005s have this problem so the chances of actually getting a good one through Dell are pretty slim. This isn't for everyone, it definitely requires a sense of adventure to take apart a brand new otherwise perfectly good $400 monitor.

edit: I might add, however, that there are no tamper evident seals anywhere on or inside this thing. The only evidence of it being opened would be the electrical tape but then again Dell would actually have to take it apart completely to find that which I highly doubt they would do.
 
Wow awesome post. I was going to take a look at that French forum (from na earlier post), to see what it involved. Way to much for me, I am bound to screw something up with this. It's nice to see it in English now for everyone else though.
 
Puterguru said:
Wow awesome post. I was going to take a look at that French forum (from na earlier post), to see what it involved. Way to much for me, I am bound to screw something up with this. It's nice to see it in English now for everyone else though.

It's actually not that hard. I mean, I'm no engineer. Just an art student and I figured it out. I guess it just depends on being able to replace it if somehow you screw it up.
 
Maybe I missed this point, but did you put just a single layer or thickness of the ET around the screen? Do you think a double layer (or more) would be a benefit in the areas that tend to leak the most light?
 
I used only a single layer. I think that's all you would need as the tape is completely opaque. But it wouldn't hurt to try using more I suppose. Let me know if it changes anything.
 
saltiness said:
I used only a single layer. I think that's all you would need as the tape is completely opaque. But it wouldn't hurt to try using more I suppose. Let me know if it changes anything.
AH. I misunderstood the purpose of the tape. I thought it was being used as a sort of cushion but instead it's used to block the light. I'm not sure how I came to that erroneous conclusion. Maybe my bad translation of the French site... :)
 
I'm not entirely sure if it's cushioning it or blocking the light, maybe it's doing both. It wouldn't hurt to try 2 or 3 layers of tape. I didn't even think of that.
 
Well, I received my replacement 2005 from Dell and there is a lot less backlight bleeding, which is a good thing. However, the color temp/brightness is not as uniform on the new monitor as it is on the old unit (which, of course, has a worse bleed problem).

SO, I didn't see it spelled out in your instructions, but I *assume* the metal housing that contains all the circuit boards also contains the backlights. If that's so, then I would also assume that a backlight swap would be viable. Yes? No?
 
No. The metal housing only contained circuit boards, the backlight is actually inside the housing of the actual LCD panel which I didn't open. I would assume you could open it and swap parts but it would probably be very difficult.
 
RATS!

Oh well, thanks anyway. And so much for the idea of user-replaceable lights....
 
Do you think this would work on other LCD monitors? I have a BenQ FP91G+ that has it down each side from top to bottom, and a new Samsung 204T that has it in the corners. (the X pattern). I am tired of losing money to ship them back for refund or RMA replacement.

I am extremely happy with the Samsung other than this little problem, if it were fixable by doing this procedure then I wouldn't bother to send it back then.
 
Who knows why they don't fix it. Doesn't make any sense.

Trucker, I would assume you could this fix similarly for other monitors. The construction on the inside is probably pretty similar so it could be the same kind of problem.
 
I followed the guide exactly and saw no difference. Electrical tape to the edge of the black part of the glass, the silver part completely covered, and the backlight was still bvleeding like mad. :(
 
Sorry to hear that. You might want to try putting more than one layer of electrical tape on there and see what that does.
 
Interesting... I don't remember the bleeding being at all bad on my Dell, but if it is this easy... :D
 
saltiness said:
I found out about this from
Next, here's the icky part - you must pop off the front bezel. It's held on by plastic clips. The easiest way to do this that I could find was to go in through the slits on the bottom of the monitor frame. Use one or two thin flathead screwdrivers. Start by prying into the slit and go inward toward the middle of the monitor to get the first clip undone. Basically once you get one clip undone you can just slide the screwdriver around the edge of the frame and pop off all the others. Take care not to scratch the shit out the frame as it is pretty weak plastic.


My 2005fpw had pretty nasty backlight issues. I just did this, and it helped a lot. The only thing I have to say, is that popping the bezel off is by FAR the worst part about this. Other then that, its really slick and very easy. Give this a try before you send one back.
 
I tried this a few months ago and it did not work. Getting the bezel off was a ***** (I was trying to be careful not to damage anything). I spent around an hour or two on that.

I put on 4 layers of black electrical tape.
 
anyone done this recently? with the ips/pva lottery and chronic banding problems on the 2007WFPs i'm thinking of just getting a 2005FPW and doing this if there is a problem with the backlight..
 
Well I bought a 2005FWP and of course it had horrible back light bleeding. I did this with one layer of tape (I actually overlapped the black part a little bit, making sure that the tape didn't get onto the visible screen by test fitting the bezel on the screen as I was applying the tape just to make sure it was fully concealed) and I have no back light bleeding at all! :)

Score one more for us!
 
Excellent. You know, you could probably have a nice little business repairing these things. Or maybe even buy returns from Dell cheap, fix them, and resell...

*makes mental note to never buy used Dell monitors on Ebay*;)
 
EaSy??

This is very hard for a girl. Even a computer science major girl. :(

an art major girl would just drop dead from the complexity. :p
 
I know a few who have tried this,it worked for one,the one I did for a friend reduced the bleed substantially but not all of it.The third person I know who tried this,had some big problems....After about 5 months,the gummy sticky stuff on the electrical tape,started to bleed of the tape backing and into the screen.

It now looks like ice on a light background.We took pics of it,and it is very obvious,and very ugly.

It pretty much ruined the screen in that he can never,ever,use any wallpaper with a light colored background,anything other then black or navy blue shows it off well to any and all,that care to look at it. :eek:
 
Manny,

Try to use pure methanol from a good optics cleaner like Eclipse. This should remove any gum from the tape and will not harm the glass. Unless it managed to seep under the glass plate. No easy fix for that... I use Eclipse to clean the sensor on my canon 1d mark ii so I know it's safe.

For tape there are two other possible solutions. Gaffer tape is thicker than electrical tape. It is like "duck tape" but won't leave a residue when peeled off. It will stick and not come up either even with heat Nor does it stretch much.

Any decent photographic supply house will have Eclipse and Gaffer tape.

Another tape would be one of the metal or foil tapes. These, however, are often permanent once set. They often use a tape like this to seal the panels together. Not sure where to get a foil tape, but you can google it.

I have repaired ooooold laptop screens by swapping out the backlight from a bad lcd. These panels used small florescent tubes like in your scanner... (don't know about the newer panels) NOT something I suggest you try on a nice panel. You would have to break the seal on the whole panel. NOT fun. But if your patience doable.

Gonna buy a 2005fwp from a guy when he gets back from japan. He said it's "barely used" and doesn't have a backlight issue. We'll see!

cj
 
Wow, well this thread is old, but I wanted to add to this...

My 2005FWP is a couple years old now (warranty is long dead) and yesterday I noticed a hair had somehow worked its way into the LCD. I thought it was on the screen for a while, but after moving my mouse around I could see that the hair had definitely worked its way INSIDE.

I followed the OP's instructions and opened it up... went a step further and lifted the mirror on the front and sprayed compressed air all over it. Put it back together and the hair was gone and the monitor still worked perfectly.

IMMENSE thanks to saltiness for the instructions. Even without the photos, it was so precise that I was able to do it. And now I know what to do should a hair (or insect) get inside of it again.
 
Sorry to bring this back from the dead but I've been away from the forums for about a year.

I just wanted to report that my monitor is still running strong with very little backlight bleed. The instruction photos have been lost to the internet monster, sadly so anyone who still wants to do this is left with the text instructions. It's really not that difficult though. Hopefully my monitor does well for another year or two until I have to spring for something with better color reproduction.
 
Heh I'm still using this monitor for almost 3 years now and still going strong. I love it, it has no major backlight bleeding. I probably won't buy anything else until it breaks or OLED monitors come out. I still can't believe there hasn't been that much progress in LCD, there isn't any reason for me to upgrade yet.
 
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