I have a toshiba A75-s231 and the screen just went out on me,the computer runs fine just no display? I'm pretty sure its not the inverter or backlight, b/c i tried hitting FN+F5 for the diplay switch and tried it on an external monitor but no luck? so i'm thinking it's the video card? since it's built in can i still add a video card to the pci slot currently used by the wifi card. Can anyone help? please i have this decent laptop just sitting here and would love to use it.

The built in display can have several common hardware problems that cause it to produce no display - in addition to the backlight or voltage inverter possibly being faulty, the wiring between the base and the display can have problems with broken wires after the laptop has been used a lot, often where the wiring passes through the hinge - but - the video should work fine with an external monitor if there is nothing wrong with the video chipset. Your laptop has a video chipset, but it does NOT have a plug in video CARD module unless it's a more expensive high end model. Most laptop models have the video chipset built into the mboard - if it is defective the mboard must be replaced. If the mboard is defective a video adapter in a PCMCIA slot or other expansion slot or in a a USB or firewire port may not work either. If you DO have a high end model that DOES have a physical plug in video card module, it could be it has a poor connection in it's slot, e.g. from the laptop being dropped, or it could be it has failed, and that could explain why neither the onboard display or an external monitor produces a display. Other things can cause no display, yet the hard drive seems to be loading Windows fine while booting. - If you have just loaded video drivers or updated video drivers, sometimes the video drivers don't detect the monitor type properly the next time you boot and after that, and you get no display (blackness) , but usually in that case you DO get a display until the point at which Windows is supposed to load. In that case, press F8 repeatedly while booting, and choose Enable VGA mode from the boot choices menu. Enable VGA mode loads everything normal mode does, except it forces Windows to use basic VGA video drivers all mboards and video chipsets support, and the specific drivers for the video chipset are not loaded. If that yields you a display in Windows, after the desktop has loaded, load Plug and Play Monitor drivers for the display, save settings, reboot, your normal boot should have a display. - A common thing that can happen with ram, even ram that worked fine previously, is the ram has, or has developed, a poor connection in it's slot(s). This usually happens a long time after the ram was installed, but it can happen with new ram, or after moving the computer case from one place to another, and I've had even new modules that needed to have their contacts cleaned. See response 2 in this - try cleaning the contacts on the ram modules, and making sure the modules are properly seated: http://www.computing.net/hardware/w... For a laptop, you must remove both its main battery and AC adapter before you do that.