I had a drink spilled on my laptop earlier in the year and it wouldnt start. I found the problem to be the ram has been fried so i replaced it and it started up perfectly The only problem is there is no blacklight on the monitor. You can faintly see whats going on but other then that its kinda dark. Does it seem like a ballast problem? How easy are they to replace and where are they located?

What you should have done when the drink was spilled was remove the main battery and AC adapter right away, clean up any liquid found, and possibly, remove the keyboard and clean it up, and open up the laptop, and remove any of the liquid found. The motherboard is always powered in some places even when the computer is not running as long as the main battery is still connected, so it doesn't matter whether the computer was running or not when the drink was spilled on it, though it is likely less damage would be done if it was not running at the time. If there are dried deposits from the liquid still inside your laptop, they can still cause problems, especially when the humidity is high - you should clean up any found before that causes more damage, e.g. with 99% isopropyl alcohol. Laptops, and LCD displays in general, don't have a "ballast" - they have a voltage inverter module that supplies high voltage to the backlight. Your display problem could be caused by that failing, or by the backlight itself failing, or both. For some info about replacing a voltage inverter or backlight, and what some typical symptoms are, see response 5 in this: http://www.computing.net/hardware/w... Since Toshiba does not, as far as I have been able to determine, make a Maintenance manual available as a free download on their web sites for their laptops, if you're leery about removing the keyboard or opening up the computer yourself, you may need to take it to a place that is approved of to work on Toshiba laptops to clean it up, and/or to try replacing the voltage inverter - they may not want to replace the backlight since it's a more finicky job.

hey thanks for the reply.

Here is a link to a site which may be able to supply disasembly info on newer Toshiba Laptop. http://www.irisvista.com/tech/ You'll have to search by Toshiba Model #. Another good number to try is the Toshiba Part Number. It should be on a lablel on the Bottom of the LT. There is nothing to learn from someone who already agrees with you.