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The only tools you will need are a Phillips and  flat blade screwdriver as well as a set of needle-nose pliers (not pictured).

This is all you will need

Lay the monitor down on its front so that you can see the backside clearly. The first step is to remove the stand. There are 5 visible screws, remove the three in the center and the stand will slide away.

Remove these screws and the stand will slide off.

Set it aside and continue.

Remove the three final screws (one was hidden under part of the stand).

Stand the monitor on its top so that you are looking at the buttons on the bottom and that the screen itself is facing away from you. Gently pry the two halves apart with your fingers so they look like the image below.

Take your flat blade screw driver and insert it into the gap and gently work it over to one of the edges. Dont try and force the two halves apart or it will break. The tabs that hold them together are on the side, so you just need to keep the halves far enough apart so that you can work the screw driver around the edge and down the side.

Forgive the blurriness of this image, the camera wouldnt focus right.

The top half  (the side that should be facing away from you) rests over and around the bottom half. The trick is to get the flat blade screw driver in between the two halves and gently pull them off of each other. I found this easiest with the screen leaning against me and by prying the screw driver slightly to the side (away from the screen). Dont try to force the halves apart directly, you’ll only break the plastic bezel. If one side seems to stick, try going down the other side. Once you have one side removed, the other should come loose even easier. The bottom (It’s actually the top of the screen, but if your following this guide it will be facing down) will remain attached.

The two sides should separate easily.

Looking down from the top with the two halves of the bezel pried apart 4-6 inches you should see a cable running from the button circuit board back under the screen itself. It can be safely unplugged but just pulling on it, there is no latch or retention mechanism.

Disconnect the cable running to the bottom/control panel.

The screen itself is not attached to either of the bezel halves, simply sandwiched between them. At this point you can remove the top half of the bezel by opening it further and wiggling it a little, or just slide the screen itself out leaving the bezel still attached. I elected to remove the bezel completely. Whichever method you choose, lay the screen glass-side down in a safe location. I chose a folded towel on the table.

You may notice that the large slab of metal on the back is not actually attached to the screen itself in any way, if you aren’t careful it will come loose. You’ll need to remove the CCFL and LCD cables first before you can safely remove it. On the right side you’ll note the large EM shield. This is covering the high-voltage CCFL cables. These cables plug into a circuit board just under this shield however, they are held in place by retention clips, so the shield will need to be removed first.

This metal shield absorbs some of the EMI generated by the high-voltage CCFLs.

I found the easiest way to remove it was to grab it on the top (right side of the image above) and pull it towards the camera, this would release the bottom right tab. It should then be able to wiggle far enough to loosen the top two tabs. I’ve taken two of these screens apart and neither one of the shields came out the same way. Both were a PITA, so your mileage may vary. It isn’t mission critical so it’s not the end of the world if you damage it slightly trying to remove it, just so long as it can be reused.

Here you can see the CCFL cables and their black retention clips.

With the shield removed you’ll expose the CCFL power cables and their connectors. The connectors are held in place by a simple retention clip. Simply press down on the center of the clip and simultaneously pull up on the outside of the clip and it should lift right off.

With the clips removed go ahead and disconnect the power cables for the CCFLs and let them hang loose. Gently lift the back panel up by pivoting it at the bottom and look underneath it. The red and white cable is the LCD DATA cable and is all that is holding the panel in place. There should be sufficient slack to lift the back panel up and reach under and disconnect the cable from the LCD. The connector is held in place by two small metal clasps on either side. Squeeze these together than the cable should disconnect easily. It might be a three handed job, to do it by lifting the back panel up. One of the two screens I disassembled had enough slack in the cable to lift the back panel up and slide it far enough forward to expose the cable from the bottom where it was easier to work on.

Disconnect this cable by squeezing together the clips on both sides.

With the cable detached lift the metal panel up and off the rest of the screen. It should now only be held in place with some pieces of tape.

Flip the removed panel over and you will find two separate circuit boards. The board on the right is the DSP (Digital Signal Processor) while the board on the left is the integrated power supply and CCFL inverter.

Left is the PSU, right is the DSP.

Remove the three screws holding the PSU board in place and remove it by lifting it up at an angle starting on the right side.

Once the board is angled about 10-15 degrees the power connector on the top should be clear of the metal panel. Once it is, pull it out to the side and lay it on top of the other board.

Squeeze the retention clip on top of the ribbon cable to disconnect it. Remove the PSU board to some place you can examine it and take a good look at the capacitors. If they look like those below, then the board is the cause of the problems.

Potentially failed capacitors.

That ends this portion of the disassembly guide. The capacitors had failed on my PSU board and as such there was no need to disassemble the panel any further.

This evening I finally got a chance to pull it apart and take a peek inside to see if there was anything I could do for it. Initially I suspected that the CCFL(Cold cathode fluorescent lamp) had gone bad. I made this assumption based on experience with LCDs in laptops at a previous job, having never seen a LCD use more than one CCFL tube for lighting the entire display. This first assumption did not change with my cursory inspection of the joint inverter and power supply PCB(Printed Circuit Board). There were no immediate signs of failure such as scorch marks or visibly damaged components, and no telltale smell of burned electronics. I set the PCB aside and continued to dismantle the LCD panel itself. Upon removing the LCD panel from the light spreader and extracting the CCFL mounts, It surprised me to find not one, not two, but four CCFL tubes. The CCFLs were grouped into two pairs, one mounted on the top and the other on the bottom of the panel.

Potentially failed capacitors.

The likelihood of all four tubes failing at once is astronomical, so I reexamined the power supply and inverter circuit board. Rather quickly I noticed 3 capacitors in the corner with bulged tops. Further searching on the internet led me to a forum post on Badcaps.net. There another user had met nearly the same problem as myself, with the same model display. That user’s fix was to replace all the capacitors on the circuit board with new higher quality (and higher capacitance) ones from Digikey.

In the mean time I have also learned that the CCFLs and inverters used in common PC lighting kits are nearly identical in design to those used in LCDs. To test the LCD inverter or CCFL, you simply connect them to their counterpart from the common lighting kit. This provides a cheap and simple method to determine if the failure is either the LCD inverter, or the CCFL. As I was never much into the PC modding scene, I do not have one of these kits and will need to acquire one before continuing.