Display very snowy and flickery?

I have had an Acer Aspire AS5745G laptop for a couple of years now with no problems. Is rarely travelled with, apart from the lounge to the dining table. Is most powered by ac adaptor and apart from the past few months where the laptop would only work on ac (would die when the power point was switched off) the display has been perfect.

I turned the laptop on the other day to find the screen flickering, with horizontal lines running through the screen (like a very bad analog TV signal) making the screen almost unreadable.

I have (well I think) confirmed that the video card isn't fried by connecting the laptop to my TV by HMDI out and the display on the TV being perfect.

I tried to pull the laptop apart to see if anything was loose, although after removing all the screws on the bottom and taking the middle section out, I stopped from going any further for fear of destroying what looked like flimsy little clips holding the outside of the frame together.

If someone has knowledge of this laptop or what this problem could be (either display kaput or connectors loose) and how one might fix this; hopefully something I can do myself as cant really afford to pay someone right now!

Any advise or tips would be greatly appreciated.