DELL Vostro 1310 - dark screen; visible only at one angle

Hello,

A few weeks ago, my Vostro 1310 screen would flicker (no colour change) at certain angles (e.g., when I would tilt it past 90 degrees). The problem quickly worsened and instead of just flickering, the entire screen would go dark at certain angles. Then, it was happening at start-up....you could make out (very, very faintly) the Windows login prompt and it would only become visible once you tilted the screen at a certain angle.

More recently....when I turn on the laptop, the entire screen is dark (but you can still tell that the Windows login is there very faintly) and it becomes visible only at about a 40-50 degree angle.  Today, I'm lucky to even get something on the screen at all.....it remains dark the entire time and if I'm super, super lucky, it may become visible if it's just at that perfect angle...as soon as it's tilted backward or forward even slightly, it goes dark. I should note again, you can make out the faint image of whatever was on the screen before it went dark. Also, when the screen is visible, everything looks perfect....there are no issues with colours, etc. In other words, it goes from "perfect" to completely dark.

My DELL is only a little over a year old and stupidly, I forgot to extend my warranty. I have brought it into a computer place near me and they think it's the connecter cable (i.e., under the hinge cover, on the left hand side --- they believe that it was "pinched" for a long time and now, it's likely severed). However, they are having a really hard time finding the cable for the 1310. Given the symptoms that I described, is it likely the LCD cable?? I can't believe it's acting up like this and it hasn't even been a year.

I have noticed other posts re: the Inspiron screen but there was no mention on those posts of flickering initially.

Thank you,

Kathy