Fixing a Laptop

[Fattoxthegreat]

I bought a broken laptop on ebay solely for the intention of fixing it. The listing explicitly stated "Just needs new screen."

Well, I received it and looked it over (after I had to buy a separate charger) and decided that their diagnosis was wrong. I've dealt with broken LCD panels before and this definitely wasn't one. The screen would turn on and be filled with horizontal white lines. The thing is though, when I (I think) went into the BIOS, the "broken" pattern changed. If it were an actual broken panel it wouldn't change, right? Also, I tried plugging the laptop into an external display and got no signal.

So anyway, I concluded the GPU had burned out. Steam was installed on the hard drive so I bet someone played this on a bed or something.

I bought a new motherboard, transplanted the CPU and plopped her back in.

After all that effort, I still had the same issue. Same horizontal white lined pattern, and still not working on an external display.

So I guess it wasn't the GPU.

What other component could cause these types of problems? Could it just be the ribbon cable is loose from the panel?

 

Thanks.