Screen works when it wants to. the laptop will be on but will not show a display; it will show a white screen for long periods of time, which usually results in playing with the position of the screen to make it work temporarily. What could be happening

Believe me, a white screen is a "happy" problem in your case as opposed to a "blue"screen. What it means is that one of the very small electrical lines to yout screen from the plug that connects it to the main curcuit board inside (the motherboard) has gotten a kink or been pressed to hard while someone was trying to keep the laptop from a fall and gripped the edge of the screen portion strongly. The other possibility is that the plug on the cable that send those wires to your sceen got a little "unplugged" so by moving the screen back and forth, it tenssions the cable just enough to make the plug align.

Please find a guy like me close by your place of residence (a guy who takes apart and puts back together laptops for a living and who can give you at least one # of a happy customer) who can tell you he's familiar with Toshiba laptops through experience, print this out and give it to him, and say, "Please disassemble my laptop only far enough to make sure this is the case, tell me the parts cost by sending me a link to eBay where you'll buy the LCD cable if neccesary, and give me a solid quote you will stand on."

I think that should get you fixed.

Kind Regards,

TheSelkie

From what you wrote, more than likely the lcd cable is loose / damaged. Take the lcd casing apart, check the back of the lcd to make sure the cable is nice and secure, do the same with the other end that connects to the motherboard, test the lcd out BEFORE you put everything back together to determine where the problem is ;)