Acer Aspire 3680 Laptop Display Problems - Screen all dark

My son, God bless him, is insane. That is why he jumped over my coffee table to grab my poor sweet cat. See, she doesn't like him. He likes to wake her up and make her go 'meow.' She wants to sleep.

So that is why he spilled the glass of tea all over my laptop, and that is why I yelled at him about being adult sized now and so big and how he has to be careful with his body now. (He's only 12 and 5'8") So he didn't ever tell me he'd spilt the tea - he only hurriedly wiped it up.

So I turned on my latop later to use it and the screen would not display anything. It was terribly dark although I could hear the computer booting up and windows trying to start. I knew it was the monitor.

I'm no expert on laptops but I could see that underneath all the darkness, I could barely make out the splash screen for me to sign on. A few google searches and I figured out indeed, it was the screen inverter most likely.

I hurriedly ordered another one - I found one shipped for 20.00 from England. I have an extra computer, I knew I could wait. I thought.

Later that night I was hankering to lay down with my laptop and read. It is just not something I could DO with my desktop. I got a great idea of going ahead, and take the screen inverter out, to get it ready to fix, and well, just to make sure I could do it. It was easy, really easy. A few screws - they are under plastic, like little nubs, just scrape those off and you'll see the screws. Taking the screws out was easy, and then I just had to pry the cover off. The inverter was easy to get to. I could SEE it had tea on it. I am so glad I went ahead and did that. I got that area dried up, and took the inverter and ran it under water really good. Just the tap water...I didn't have any distilled but I know that would have been better. I've learned that water often won't hurt electronics as long as you let them dry if they get wet, but any sugary drink leaves a terrible sticky residue. I let the inverter dry out over night, inspected it carefully to make sure it really was dry, and I plugged it back in. Well, it worked! I am using it now! Problem solved.

So anyway, if your Acer Aspire 3680 gets fubared and the screen goes black, don't dispair. It is a problem that is easily fixed. It doesn't take an expert.