Laptop screen goes black

[Wedge1]

What might be the cause of this behavior? Dark screen at idle but lights up (flickers briefly) when keys are pressed.

This is an Acer Aspire 3100-1556. It uses ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 integrated graphics, but how does one determine if the chip is defective or, say, the LCD itself? If neither of these are likely to be at fault, what else might be?

The laptop is unusable like this, and I am trying to diagnose this problem for a friend who needs it for school work.

 

[mpilchfamily]

There is no problem. Its a power saving feature. If the unit sits idle it shuts off the LCD to conserve power.

Go into the control panel and select power options. There you'll find the settings for the monitor. In a drop down menu you'll be able to choose how long you want the system to sit idle before turning the monitor off or you can tell it to never turn it off. Considering its an older laptop i wouldn't change the settings. Unless you almost never run it on battery power.

 

[Wedge1]

I think I didn't really describe the problem adequately. The screen goes black, and Windows XP can be seen, just barely. This is with the Func+Brightness keys maxed out, power cord plugged. This is a defect of some sort and I am trying to determine if it's the graphics processor or the LCD itself and I think that it is the LCD or some component therein; otherwise, I believe no image would exist at all.

It has been suggested to me at another forum that it could possibly be the inverter. I would like for someone to give me a step-by-step on how to accurately (or with great probability) diagnose the problem correctly.