am i screwed?

[icekangz817]

Hello Gents,

Recently i came home from work one day and thought my laptop had shut down because the screen went blank (like it was off completely), so i push the power button so it turns off (the hard drive did anyways). So i pushed the power button again and it goes to boot up like it normally does, but the monitor is so dimm you can barely see anything on the screen. It looks almost completely dark, but if you look close enough you can see the windows and icons on the screen (but like i said, BARELY). So i hooked up my desktop monitor to it and i can see clear as day running off the laptop hard drive, but still can't see anything on the laptop screen. To make a long story short, am i screwed or what? Will i need to replace the whole monitor (not sure of what the cost is gonna be), could it be repaired without replacing the monitor (which would be cheaper i would think), and if replacing the monitor was the only choice would i be better off buying a desktop monitor and using that? Your expertise and advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Ice

[Luciel]

Ive had this before, on laptops, that tends to be a corrupt graphic driver, plug it into a normal monitor so u can see, uninstall the graphs drivers, restart, download the newest, install, restart, and unplug the monitor, and see if it works

[icekangz817]

Thank you for your input. It turns out my monitor is not dead, but the florescent light buld inside went out and needed to be replaced. That is still cheaper than having to replace the whole monitor. wooooo hoooo

ice

[Luciel]

ok, glad it all turned out ok-ish in the end (Laptop = Expensive toy )