I had my toshiba P-35 laptop give me the problem from hell. The power jack from inside broke from constant pulling and moving of the power cord. Yikexxx. This jack (power input) is connected to the mother board. Now thats a major problem because my warranty had expired. To repair the jack you either have to buy a new jack from toshiba and have it installed. Which means the whole laptop had to be unassembled into tiny pieces and risking a major damage to other components or (plan B) replacing the whole motherboard. Either way, the repair was going to cost me an arm an a leg. So what did I do? I opened the damn thing myself but very carefully, taking digital photos to see which screw goes where etc. I read internet info on opening up the laptop and did everything in an orderly fashion. I didn't want to be left with 10 screws left over in the end. Finally I took the motherboard out and examined the jack. Turns out the input DC in to the motherboard part was broken. Its a bad design from toshiba and seems like many people were having such problems with these models. The power jack would break after some time. So I thought about it for a long time and then did some of my own modifications to the jack to prevent it from breaking the input power joint again. I cut off the metal wire that was soldered to the mother board. This was a rigid connection and with constant movement of the electrical input power connector to the laptop's input motherboard connector, it was breaking the connection to the motherboard input point. The solder would break off and connection would be disturbed. So I put in a flexible wire about 1/2 inch long in place of the rigid metal wire to motherboard . This way I would have flexibility and the joint will not break off as it did before. Lets see if my ghetto method would hold for a few months. The laptop is working fine as of this moment.
The moral of the story is this: if you have a laptop and something major breaks down which requires an expensive repair, then try to have it repaired locally and see if it could be fixed using the same old part or some dominican modification. My laptop is alive because I have done some of my own modifications to adapt to this country's resources.
AZB (also an electrical engineer)
Well, AZB, good job. No offense, but power jack is one thing and sensitive LCD screen another. If screen itself is in one piece, there are still so called 'drivers' chips around screen. If they are bad, you will see some or all stripes over your LCD. Mostly new screen is needed.
Inverter is there also, it do the hi-power electricity for light bulb. (for backlight). If your screen is all black, try to take a closer look under different angels. (Power on your laptop of course). Gently press screen here and there, can you see any of picture? Do this in very light environment. If so, your inverter or light bulb is broken. Easy to fix with original parts. Still question how to find them in DR?
Try to connect your laptop with external monitor. Use FN key and some of these function keys (F3, F4 or so...) to activate external monitor. Do you see picture? If yes, you can find (buy) one regular monitor and continue to do your job. Quick, cheaper but not complete solution.
Like others I would recommend new laptop. Even if you replace your screen, you will wait no long for next problem. Weather in DR is problem. We have easily more than 95% of relative humidity in DR, and reading tech-specs of our computers we can learn that all of this electronic stuff are made for maximum 85%. So average lifetime of one computer here is one year.
Best regards.