I have read a few related threads and nothing hits my problem right on the head.

My wife spilled a few drops of soda on her Dell laptop LED screen. Soon after, the screen went black, but you can faintly see images. When I plug into external monitor, it works fine, so it's not video. I have tried the "unplug battery and hold power button for 60 seconds" and that didn't work. I took out panel and there does not seem to be any liquid damage, but I'm not an expert.

I can swap the panel or inverter, just don't know which it is and don't want to just throw money into something that won't fix it. Local computer shop wants $250-300, and they don't even do the fixing, they send it off to Chicago!!

I've seen a flowchart somewhere online showing if this has/has not happened, go to this item in the chart, etc. That helped me determine it could be the inverter. Any help would be appreciated!

Perhaps you could do this search in Google: "led screen circuit diagram"' there appears to be something to get your teeth into.