on my laptop the screen is visible but very dark. its not the brightness settings, so i imagine perhaps the bulb has gone but would love someone cleverer than me to confirm this, or suggest what i should do next. funny thing is that when you turn the laptop on, the 'acer' sign comes on fully lit, then it goes dark. that's why i thought perhaps its not as simple as the bulb going.

all help much appreciated.
thanks,
gary

So it's the video driver settings. I have a laptop with an nVidia card; for movies I have to go into the nVidia control panel and reset Video settings to default. It then brightens up properly but these settings don't survive a reboot. I can't be bothered to find out why; but I see similarities.

I think your bulb is dead..(think).......I dont know if this is ture, but I heard if you shine a flash light on the screen you can see if you need a new bulb....If what suspishio idea doesnt work try mine

Laptops don't have bulbs. They have (say) 1280 x 1024 leds x 3 for the prime colours. So if the whol screen is dark, either the leds power is weak or the video settings are wrong.

Or have I missed something.

LCD screens do have bulbs. They are cold cathode ray flourescent lights, and are called backlights. CCFL's, they are along the bottom of a laptop screen, and about 2mm wide. Very fragile, well hidden. If yours is turning on, and then turning off, then I would say there are 2 very strong possibilities.

1) The ccfl is going bad and overloading the inverter, causing the inverter to shutdown.
2) The inverter is overheating and is shutting down.

Boot the laptop, and wait a few minutes until you are certain that windows is up and running. Then connect an external monitor to the back of the laptop, and enable the dual monitor feature. If it works fine, then take a very strong flashlight, I use a krypton bulbed Maglight, and shine it at the screen at a 45 degree angle. Look at the screen from every angle that you can, and if you can see the windows operating system on your screen (data), then your backlight is out. IF there is no light and no apparent data, then you may have a ribbon problem.

I must say this, make sure your video settings are set up properly. If you don't know what they are supposed to be, then use the external monitor to reset them to default, and then reboot and see what happens. Do this stuff, and then repost.

i have the same problem .. screen was gone for 1 month then it came by itself and after 2 weeks again it gone..i thought the investor is gone but y screen appeared for 2 weeks..??

I now have this problem with a Toshiba M50.
The desktop is there alright, and is working, but you can only see it under a very bright light.
Did anyone ever find a solution for this problem?
Any idea of repair cost?
I did find that if I opened and closed the lid in quick succession it did bring it back to normal, but that eventually stopped working too.

I see that this thread has been marked solved and I am wondering what the solution was, as I have the same problem.
Would appreciate any help.

I am having same problem with my Compaq Presario TU 6425.
I also noticed that it works with dual monitor
and when music is being played or any hardidsk activity is happening i can hear it.

screen comes every time when i boot.
or close screen then reopen it again

and yes sometimes i am able to see windows screen completely dark.

I am mentioning my problem below please direct me.

it gets blank but the comp works.

on 15th nov i faced this problem first time

i changed cmos setting to default then did my setting once again and it worked for 2 days
in the mean time i also installed escan trail version
(since i used one pendrive on my comp with virus i have AVG installed free version)

on monday i had same problem and then energy save setting was 5 minutes and i was working on battery

then i worked through power supply and it worked without problem till Monday night

it gets black out every few minutes.
i close the screen and then after few seconds i open it then display is proper....

please help i cant live without it even an hour

Hope that you are not still without your machine.
I am told that the backlight has gone in mine and will cost 200 Euro to repair.
This is nearly half the cost of a new machine with higher spec.
I am leaning towards going for the new machine.