Try this on for size. Turn on laptop, see BIOS, Windows XP startup and then goes black. Turn off the lights you can see that the screen is lit up but nothing on the display. Turn off power and start back up again and it works fine. Made sure that the power settings are disabled for turning off the display and shut down again. Turned on ok. NExt day, same issue, turn on computer, see BIOS screen, XP flash screen then black. Will be trying an external monitor tonight, did not have one at the time. Any ideas? Seems like the backlight is working, but not absolutely positive.
TIA,
pappy