My ThinkPad T42 is broken. It happened just before I moved in to the new office. Like an idiot I balanced it on the top of a pair of step-ladders after I'd been testing the wall sockets for the network. Despite making a mental note to remember it was there I came back later and folded the ladders up - completely forgetting it was on top. It fell 6' on to a concrete floor, although I managed to break the fall half way with my foot. Woops.

Testament to the build quality of the ThinkPads is the fact it was relatively unharmed other than a piece of the casing missing on the corner. The only problem is with the screen. It's very, very, very dull. You can just make out the login box if you get to within an inch of the screen. Logging in or using it with its own screen is out of the question. Since I've moved to the new office I've had it permanently on the port replicator with an external screen. It's not been used as a portable laptop since and won't be until it's fixed.

Now that a new baby has arrived it would be good if I could work from the house a little more. Hence I really need to get it sorted. I just don't know where to start. Do you?

At the weekend I finally got round to taking it apart, as you can see. Believe it or not it's on and running in this shot. I even managed to completely re-assemble it without powering down.

In taking it apart I was hoping to find a loose connection and fix the problem. Alas I didn't and it looks like a hardware fault.

Having done a little googling I narrowed the problem down to either the LCD inverter or the CCFL backlight. As the CCFL is the cheapest part I'm going to buy one of them and hope that works. If not I'll try the inverter. If neither work I might have to consider a new laptop (it is nearly 3 years old after all). What's the equivalent of the T42 now? Is it the T61?