Sorry to put this in here but I sort of need the immediate response and I know it would take at least a day to be seen in on the Tech board.

I was working with my laptop just fine last night and I woke up this morning about 9 hours later to find the screen completely black. Well, that's normal, it's just my screensaver. So I move the mouse around and I hear the hard drive spinning back to life but the screen is still black. I try hitting the keyboard a bit, no help. I hold the power button to force a restart and I see the Windows loading image flicker very briefly on screen and then disappear. I eventually hear the Windows chime but nothing is on my screen. Then I look a little closer and I can barely see some of the icons, enough to feel my way around until I eventually got an extra LCD monitor I have laying around hooked up as a secondary one. That's what I'm using right now.

So since it's not a vid card problem because it works fine on another monitor, and because I can just barely see the stuff on the laptop's screen, I'm assuming the bulbs on the backlight of this 3 1/2 year old laptop finally burnt out? Is that normal? How much would it cost to fix, and am I better off buying another computer instead?

I leave for school on wednesday, that's why I'm sort of freaking out about it.

Thanks

3 1/2 years old?

Time to buy a new one.

In order to convince my parents to do that I need to be able to tell them that we have no other options. I've been wanting a new laptop for the past like year haha.

I know this is blasphemy and I promised myself I would never do such a thing, but are services like Geek Squad able to install new bulbs in LCD screens or is that beyond the scope of their abilities ?

I'm fairly positive you can actually ask them if they are capable of doing it before commissioning them, and not have to pay.

Eat it for science.

Would it happen to be an HP?

I know a friend actually replaced his screen itself, so search either ebay, or google "laptop replacement parts", and for your specific model number, and you MIGHT be able to get a replacement.

Not sure though, best of luck to you, maybe it'd be better for you if you couldn't.

Yes...why?



Haha yeah I'm kinda hoping that's the case, I really want a new laptop

Call?

What model is it? I had an old HP laptop I bought about 3 1/2 years ago that bit the dust. Some of the old HPs had power jack problems. Does the power jack feel loose or wiggle a bit?

I bought a new HP and I noticed they did the power jack a little differently. It's on it's on seperate card rather than connected straight to the motherboard. So if it goes bad, it is easier to repair.