I blogged about replacing the hinge on my laptop. Now I get to do it again for my wife's identical laptop. Stay tuned, by next week you should see a very nice blog post about how to do this with pictures. Also, I'm working on my mom's laptop (an old Fujitsu LifeBook C-7631). I'm pretty sure that either the LCD inverter is hosed or it might just be a loose connector. We might just get her a new one.
[Here it is:
http://freachable.net/2008/03/24/SonyVaioVGNA190DisassemblyReassemblyAdviceWithPictures.aspx]