Laptop goes blank

When I power up my laptop, everything goes fine... all the way through the start up(usually). Then at a random time the screen will flicker a little bit then everything goes black, and there is no activity. It is past warrenty and cpu repair shops are a rip off, so any help would be greatly appreciated. Could this be a power supply problem maybe?


p4
windows xp
yes its updated
yes the drivers are updated

Thanks.

 

When you say no activity, do you mean no screen activity, or is it just totally inactive. No hard disc activity etc.

Can you connect an external monitor to the laptop? If you can, then set for both screens to display, then if your laptop screen goes black, and the other doesnt, then it may be a problem with the backlight inverter. When the screen "goes black", have a look closely. If you can see a very dim image, then its an inverter/backlight problem

 

Different monitor does not work.

And yes there is a slight glow to the screen when it goes blank

and no activity as in no hd activity.

 

It sounds like the machine is locking up a the point where the screen momentarily goes blank during boot. Try booting into safe mode by hitting F8 as windoze starts to boot. If you can get into safe mode, with a display, then go into device manager and uninstall your graphics adaptor. Reboot windoze normally, and it should re-detect your graphics card and reinstall the drivers.

 

safe mode does the same thing, and it doesnt use the vid card drivers, so I dont think its a solution.

I've narrowed it down to a power supply problem or something with the monitor