The Druidess is having trouble with her computer this morning. She turned it on as normal, noticed the screen flicker, but then it goes black. Otherwise, it sounds like the machine is booting up as normal…but we can’t tell, because the screen isn’t working.
Any ideas on the cause and/or how to fix this?
What kind of laptop is it, specifically?
It’s a Toshiba Satellite, one of the low end models, about 4-5 years old.
It could also be a break in the ribbon cable to the laptop’s screen, a faulty video card, a hard drive happening to develop a bad block underneath the video card driver, a backlight going out (although backlights usually dim slowly over months, not go out all-at-once), or the screen brightness simply being set to 0 (which turns off the backlight).
Without more information, I can’t do anythinig better than that.
Hmmm…well, that gives us some avenues to explore. Thanks. We’re taking it to someone to look at it later today. Hoping for something he can fix, because replacing it is not in the budget these days.
Oh, in that case, I’d say it’s time for a new laptop. Laptops simply don’t last 4-5 years, especially low-end ones. If you figure out and fix this issue, it’ll either cost you as much as a new laptop would to fix, or something else will go wrong 2 months down-the-road and you’ll be in the same boat you’re in now.
In the future, you might anticipate that when asking for computer help it helps others to know what kind of computer you’re talking about.
My laptop is probably close to 6 years old and still meets my needs quite well, TYVM. 
In older Sony VAIOs the issue was the power management firmware going on the fritz and commanding the backlight to turn off, this produced the same flickering and then going out totally. I never really was able to fix the problem, when it happened I’d turn it off and reboot, sometimes several times, and that would fix it for the next few months.
Could be the inverter too. If you’re handy with electronics you could see if you could get a cheap inverter on ebay, either as a spare part or from a junk unit with a broken screen and try replacing it (warning- high voltage).
Try to plug a standalone monitor into the back and see if it works. That could be a temporary workaround if you can’t afford a new laptop. When I was in college, I used an old hand-me-down CRT plugged into a laptop until my next semester’s loan disbursement came in. It wasn’t great, but it was functional!
If plugging it into an external monitor doesn’t work, you probably need to replace the laptop completely. Repairs for laptops are very rarely cost-effective, and may actually be impossible (depending on the model).
Well ok but I were you, I’d keep up-to-the-second backups at all times. 5400 RPM drives simply don’t last that long, especially in laptops. That’s not to say it’ll die tomorrow, but I certainly wouldn’t trust it one iota.
I hate to see people lose data.
It happened to a friend. This is easy to check - you can still see the things on the screen, it’s just very dim.
You do have a point that backups are a very good idea. Really should do that sometime soon (haven’t done one in longer than I want to admit). 