Hi, I am tryin to fix my friends laptop right now. He was walking in the hall way with it open in school and he droped it and the combo drive came out (it works fine) and the screen is VERY dark, I know a lot about computers and their hardware...but I tried re-doing the monitor setup...the briggtness and darkness those are all set correctly, and i tred reinstalling the driver for the video card and for the monitor and nieghter one of those worked.. I am on it now and it is very hard to see the text. it is a HPpavillion zt1175, he baought it about a year ago brand new. Any help would be appreciated. thanks. matt hawkins

Sounds like the backlight is either broken or one of its components is disconnected or damaged. A laptop screen is lit up by a cold cathode tube which looks like an extremely thin fluorescent light bulb.

the backlight..where is that located is it on the moniter or in by the mobo

no it's by the monitor (screen) Techy n Welsh

lol... i have the same laptop too- the HP pavillion zt1175. I also have the same problem as well; the only differance is that i didn't drop it. It looks like HP didnt build this laptop with good parts. The graphics card reallty sucks too if u exit out of windows media player while its not responding it glitches out and changes its settings. Anyway i wanted to know how much did it exactly cost you to fix it so tata i know the people who wanna fix my computer aren't ripping me off. I hope that by buying a new backlight its not gonna suck up all my battery life. My Email is Riverblue2003@yahoo.com

I dropped my laptop and broke the screen. Is there any way i can get this fixed. I checked for the screen on net and it's $500. Can i use a docking station and a monitor and still use the laptop. I purchased it for $1500 and don't want to throw it way.