Moving black dot on LCD Screen - what? - Could it be??

**stlu** · August 28th, 2013

I am borrowing a laptop from a friend of mine. It's pretty expensive so I worry about anything bad happening to it (even due to normal wear) while it's in my posession.

Today I noticed a tiny black dot, 1 pixel in size, moving around on the screen. Knowing its a windows install with no antivirus, I figured it was finally hit with some annoying prank software. So I rebooted the machine, and the moving black dot was still there, even when the system was in POST mode after the reboot.

Ok, so now I'm thinking there's something wrong with the graphics card or the data cable to the LCD screen. I googled it, and the closest answer I could come up with was some guy on a forum said it might be some mercury that's come loose and is getting bounced around by electrical charges.

There was a joke about it being a bug on the surface of the display, to which I ignored. Turns out the joke was on me, after all.

Getting frustrated, and worried, I examined more closely. the black spot was actually about 3-6mm deeper then the pixels on the display, so I knew it was not being generated by software or hardware issues. In sheer astonishment, I applied pressure to the front and backside of the screen lid, and the black dot... got a bit bigger, and turned red.

(Groan)

So I don't think tiny droplets of mercury turn red when squeezed. How in the world did a tiny bug get inside the LCD display? It must have been walking between the pixel grid and the backlight area, I don't know how LCD displays are built, but the chances of that seem incredibly low.

So now I will probably have to pay to get the dead bug out of the LCD, if that is even possible. I figure with my luck, it would have eventually starved and died on-screen anyway, instead of conveniently going off to the side.

The moral of the story is: if you think there's an insect inside the LCD display, don't be an idiot like me and squish it there.