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Offline What exactly are you saying there?
Does the initial "IBM logo" screen display properly?
Is the screen too dark to read once Windows loads?
Since an external monitor does seem to work, your brother's general assessment of the problem with the lappy's screen might be right. If that's the case, I would:
1. Set up filesharing between the laptop and desktop in order to back up your data. We can walk you through that if need be.
2. Buy a laptop-to-desktop (2.5"-to-3.5") drive adaptor and temporarilly install the laptop drive on the desktop machine. That will bypass any possible problems with networking the two machines together. Again- if you need more info on that we can give to you.
Offline Offline 1. Judging from the info you've given so far about the screen- you could have a hardware problem, and it could even be the specific connection problem you mentioned. The ribbon cable that carries the power and data signals between a laptop's motherboard and its screen has to do a lot of flexing in the course of opening and closing the lappy, and that wear can take a toll on the integrity of the cable over time.
However, if you haven't done this already (and if you can get a useable brightness again, obviously), I'd try downloading and installing a fresh load of video drivers before doing anything else. Replacing or repairing the screen won't be cheap, and you could get dinged a fair amount of $$ just to have a pro repair shop diagnose it for you.
2. In terms of your filesharing/networking question: are you using XP Home, Pro, a mix of both, and are the systems running SP2 or SP1? Networking is one of the major areas where the two versions of XP differ greatly, so the sharing configuration differs between the two as well.
Offline Offline I agree with your brother on this one: a P-II certainly has no real value anymore, so it isn't worth dumping any $$ whatsoever into fixing it given that new machines are pretty cheap.
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