I've had a problem with my laptop: A couple times when I turn it on, the screen just doesn't turn on. There isn't a button to individually turn it on or off from the rest of the laptop. A couple of times, to make it work, I've let my computer boot all the way up and then restart it, and thus far that has worked a couple of times. Lately though, that hasn't helped at all, and my screen has been black for the past 2 days. The machine is pretty old, made it 99' or so, but I just had a new screen installed about a year and a half ago. My Warrenty expired a few months ago, so I can't ask them to come down and replace a few parts... If anyone has any idea as to what is causeing the problem, I would really appreciate it. The only thing I can think of right now is that it is old, or that the connection between the screen and the computer is broken in some way, except usually if there is a loose connection like that, the computer doesn't run on at all.
A very similar problem occured with my laptop. I would turn it on and nothing would happen except the fan making noise. It went progressively from booting up most of the time to not starting up at all. It turned out that my motherboard was dead. You could take it to a computer repair place and see if there is something wrong with it. Most places only charge $50 or so. The only proble is that laptops are very expensive to repair and usually require you to send them in. Also, you may want to try hooking up a desktop monitor to see if the screen is out.
An excellent idea. That is what they taught us at Apple to tell if an issue was with the screen itself or a mother board. (or as Apple calls is "logic board")
I don't know, it's working right now. This time all I did was mess around with the plug (my plug for the power has been messed up for a while, I have to tape the end of it so the piece that fits in the laptop doesn't fall off...) and I pressed down on the area where the connection between the screen and keyboard. It's the same place where there was a problem a couple of years ago. Hopefully what ever I did, it will stay that way.
I just got my laptop back today from Sony. My screen wouldn't turn on but you could hear it powering up. They ended up changing the RAM and replacing thermal sheets in it (thats what was on the invoice anyway). The only think I can think of doing is taking it to a repair place and have them look at it. Hopefully it wont be to big of a problem so you dont lose a lot of $$$ out of it.
You might also try hooking up your laptop to a standard monitor, to see if you can isolate the problem to the monitor, or to the laptop itself. On my laptop, there is also a small button near the base of the screen that turns off the monitor when you close it. (Like the light in the refridgerator). It's not very obvious, and I could see it getting dust in it and sticking over time.
