I got home from work today to see my laptop on, but only displaying a black screen. I tried rebooting, but the black screen remained unchanged (or more precisely, switched various shades of dark grey/black as the laptop booted up).
After unplugging the power supply and rebooting, everything worked without any problems. After I plugged the power supply back in, the screen stayed for about 5 seconds before going black again. While the screen was black, the laptop remained on and the battery recharged.
Later (with the battery power run down a fair bit), I was able to restart the computer while plugged in and proceed as normal at first. However, after about 90 minutes the screen went black yet again.
Any thoughts or specifics on what might be causing this?
System Specs: Dell Inspiron 1545, approximately 4 years old, running Windows Vista.
Other Things I have tried:
-Adjusting the brightness settings directly.
-Checking the power saving options to make sure that the brightness wasn't set down for "while plugged in"
-Unplugging the power supply after the screen goes dark (no effect for several minutes -- I ended up rebooting in unplugged mode).
-Starting in Safe Mode (no effect)
Things I haven't tried yet
-Using a different monitor (I have no other monitors, and my TV doesn't support a direct hookup).
-Removing the battery, or anything at all that would require taking a screwdriver or anything to the computer.