Screen broke after doing a good deed

[katz]

I remoted in to a friend's laptop who we don't see very often, lives in another city. Anyway, ran superantispyware & turned off some processes running in the background. Rebooted to ensure all went well, then turned the laptop off remotely for them as they went to work in the meantime.

Didn't touch it for a couple days due to work schedule, turned it back on this morning and is greeted with this screen. I suggest that it appears to be a cracked screen. They aren't necessarily "mad" about it, I would say disappointed. They have no pets, and swear they never dropped or bumped it.

I suggested that maybe she is closing the lid from the corner and flexing the lid which caused a little damage over time and this was when it decided to show up. Seeing that the damage appears to be on the right hand side, I would guess they pull on that corner to close it.

Odd how it chose that time to fall apart though, after a remote session and they never closed the screen. It sat untouched since that time. At least this is the version of the story that I have, lol.

 

[britechguy]

I remoted in to a friend's laptop who we don't see very often, lives in another city. Anyway, ran superantispyware & turned off some processes running in the background. Rebooted to ensure all went well, then turned the laptop off remotely for them as they went to work in the meantime.

It absolutely is a cracked screen. [That is, unless it's an elaborate ruse (and I've seen them) where a cracked screen image is being presented on screen]. And since you say you remoted in, you've never laid hands on the machine itself, so you cannot have cracked it.

If ever there comes a time where doing the kind of fixes you did can actually crack a screen, we'd all be in a heap of trouble! This is not on you, because it cannot possibly be on you when you never laid a hand on the hardware. Given your description of what you ran, the ruse angle seems very unlikely to me, but who knows?

 

[britechguy]

By the way, in most cases you can feel an actual screen crack with the edge of your fingernail if you very carefully run it over the area(s) that seem to be cracked. Not always, but often.

Also, if they happen to have a desktop machine in the house, hooking up its monitor to see what displays on it as opposed to the laptop screen can be a differential diagnostic technique, too. If they both show "cracked screen" it's being fed as an image. If they don't, and the monitor is showing whatever it normally would have shown on the laptop, it's an actual cracked screen.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Odd how it chose that time to fall apart though, after a remote session and they never closed the screen. It sat untouched since that time. At least this is the version of the story that I have, lol.

Yeah right, and I have Pacific beachfront property for sale in Kansas City. That's impact damage.

 

[katz]

Yeah right, and I have Pacific beachfront property for sale in Kansas City. That's impact damage.

Maybe it's a new screensaver/background that "accidentally" got installed. lol. I would sometimes put one of those backgrounds on my wife's phone, lol.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Assuming it's not a screen saver... that sort of damage is not from normal use.

Something has to be on the keyboard tray and closed inside the laptop for that to happen.

 

[katz]

Assuming it's not a screen saver... that sort of damage is not from normal use.

Something has to be on the keyboard tray and closed inside the laptop for that to happen.

Good point. Maybe something was laying on the keyboard and she closed it. I've seen that type of damage happen before.

 

[britechguy]

I've also seen that type of damage just from the screen flexing, and if there is a flimsy top side (common on consumer grade machines) and the lid is not closed either by pushing the center or both corners at once, you can (and, indeed, do) get this sometimes.

Strike breakage (which is what small object pushing into the screen is) tends to have a star pattern, at least somewhere, as part of it. This has strictly long, semi-diagonal arcs. And I'd be willing to bet the top of the arc is where the screen was pushed from as a single point.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Something might have fallen on it too...

Either way, no way to get that going without a new LCD, I just hope you can source one. I haven't been able to get LCDs for some of the laptops that wander my way over the last year or so.

 

[nlinecomputers]

I've seen cracks like that with impacts from the back. The client had a closed laptop sitting on his table, up jumps his 10 lbs cat...crack. Never knew it until she opened the lid.

 

[timeshifter]

To be clear, they're not trying to implicate your remote work as the cause of this, are they?

 

[HCHTech]

I remoted in to a friend's laptop who we don't see very often, lives in another city.

I believe the phrase is "No good deed goes unpunished." - I would tell them to take it somewhere - anywhere - just to get diagnosed and independently ask that vendor how this could have happened (without telling them about the remote session). No way they'll throw you under the bus.

 

[Markverhyden]

First place you don't know what they physically did with the screen. Just what they told you. I do find it interesting how the picture is taken and it's completely dark except for the screen. A bright light on the F11 area or the backside in line with that might yield more.

Either something small was above the F11 key when the tried to close it or it took a whack on the backside in the same area.

 

[Philippe]

Furthermore, the screen might have been already cracked when you remoted in. There is no way you could "see" it...

 

[symbatech]

If I had a nickel for every time a customer told me "I didn't touch it, it just broke on its own", well, I'd have a handful of nickels. That's physical damage caused by impact, torque, or the lid being closed on an object as others have pointed out. I would simply explain that to them and tell them the screen has to be replaced, end of story. Sounds like your timing is about as good as mine is though, lol.

 

[katz]

To be clear, they're not trying to implicate your remote work as the cause of this, are they?

No, they're not. However, the timing of the situation is ironic, lol

 

[Sky-Knight]

No, they're not. However, the timing of the situation is ironic, lol

"Irony is not coincidence"

The word I'd use is tragic!

But yeah... that sucks.

 

[cypress]

To be clear, they're not trying to implicate your remote work as the cause of this, are they?

That's what I was thinking after reading the original post.

 

[frase]

Wow did you "use the force on this one".

Looks to me it originated from the bottom where it branches out into three. Something must have got inside the bezel and fractured from there.