LCD Monitor Repair (bad capacitors) by an Amateur 

Thanks for the tip!

Also, if there is a lot of copper pours that are going to spead the heat from the tip, low melt desoldering alloys exist. Mixing that into the old throughholes will keep the solder liquid longer and will help in taking out tough to remove components.

The reason is that manufactures use lead free solder with don't melt as easy and don't flow well. When you add "fresh" solder what you are doing is adding the leaded solder making it easier to work with.

My backlight is on. But screen stays black. No odd menu, no “no input”. Nothing, but it’s on. And pc detects it. :(

Have you tried to find a schematic? www.viewsonic.com/parts/monitor-parts/lcd/documentation/schematics.html

Thanks man. Il check that out , ive already desoldered the smd capacitor and its not shorted since the short is on the board pads. My guess the short on the driver board could be of the board itself or some caps/transitors in the Lcd panel itself.

Actually disassembling a larger version of the same/similar monitor right now and stopped because I got flashbacks to the time I took apart a failing PSU and got zapped by a capacitor that still had some charge (one of the more unpleasant zaps I've received). Do you know a safe amount of time to wait for discharge?

Ha! Good point. I guess I still wouldn't know because I don't know which brands of caps are good. :) If this was a higher end product, I would have probably done more research on that instead of clicking on the first thing that matched my search criteria.

But he used a very poor choice of type of capacitor IF he wanted this fix to be done properly. He used Nichicon's low cost VZ series which is Nichicon's cheapest 105C rated series. He is working on a switching supply and at least one of them (gold bar) was a Low-ESR type cap. Equally important to capacitance value and voltage rating is the ESR type. Also good to find proper lead spacing - which he did do. Also you should always good to go up a size in voltage rating as long as it fits. Should have used Panasonic Long Life, Low ESR cap such as EEU-FR1E102 for $1.04 and EEU-FR1V471 for $0.75 (Can also get low ESR Nichicon's that are quite good, HE series). Use of cap without low-ESR rating will result in heat --> shorter component life and having to repeat process again and possibly taking out other components this time. This is something most amateurs and even many "professionals" overlook. If I was taking the time to replace any caps on that board - I would have replaced ALL that CAP-XON chinese garbage. And, PLEASE, never buy caps from Amazon! There are a ton of counterfeiters out there that are simply re-sleaving low priced caps and selling them at a higher price. Buy only from authorized distributors such as Digikey or Mouser and never generic sellers on Amazon. Both of those caps from Amazon were $13.49 (with "Free" shipping). Current Mouser online price would have been $11.57 for 2 of each size including $8 for shipping. Correct type of caps, better ratings on parts, lower cost AND you would have received genuine caps that aren't already 10 years old.

Sometimes the top will be bulged out. Other times they will show no signs.

HA, yes! I fumbled my words there. Bad timing since I was trying to convey that it was old because it didn't have HDMI.