Looking for a crash course on ears circuit board repair/diagnosing

I've taught myself some of the basics, and I have been tinkering for a few years now. I can replace caps and transistors etc if I see their physically blown, but I don't know what to look for, or what to test. I'd LOVE to fix monitor chassis, as our company spends $8k+ a year on monitor chassis repair as none of us inhouse have the knowledge to do so.

What kinds of tools/testers would you reccomend? I know I need a capacitance tester.

What exactly are IC's, and how can I tell/test of they are bad? Same with resistors? How can I test them?

Any input, tips, or sources for beginers like me is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

If a monitor chassis is having issues, it's best just to replace all the caps. To reliably check a cap you'd need to remove at least one of its leads from the circuit. Caps are cheap, sooner or later they're all going to have problems, might as well do them all at once as long as you're going through the trouble.

I need to work on my monitor skills as well. I keep wanting to buy one of those Randy Fromm Dvd sets with the books. Well I wanted to go take some classes but I think hes not doing that latley.

Well discharge the caps [electrolytic] first as they can hold their charge for a long time. Just short the leads together and make sure the instrument you use has a non conductive handle, short the lead together then just pull the whole cap from the circuit. If you don't want to just shot gun the circuit use your fluke to see which are bad and which are salvageable and IT DOES matter which polarity they are placed back in the circuit.

IC are just the back bone of all electronics, some are custom others are standard. To test IC you will need a data probe or a scope to test logic levels along with the device data sheet to see how the IC operate.

Testing resistors is a no brainier, just put your fluke on the leads and observe the read out and compare it to the color code on the resistor. If other resistors are in parallel you might have to lift a lead to test.