my Compaq Armada 7790DMT laptop's screen suddenly went black. i was in the middle of using it yesterady (typing out a report for school), and the screen just blacked out, quite suddenly. upon close inspection i saw the screen was actually still lit but very dimmly so. i checked the batteries, plugged it in to the wall, restarted it, fiddled with the brightness settings, etc. all to absolutely no effect. the screen remained the same, extremely dim and black unless examined very closely, under all circumstances. during POST and in Windows. one second it is working the next it is not, and there is no obvious reason why. what happened??? HP Vectra VL400 1.0ghz Pentium 3 512mb PC133 SDRAM 120gb 7200rpm 8mb cache WD1200JB hard drive ATI Radeon 9200 128mb AGP video card

There could be a problem with the laptop's backlight or the power inverter. A sudden failure like what you described is more than likely caused by the power inverter which supplies HV to the backlight itself.

http://www.laptopking.com/inverterlist.asp IMPORTANT NOTE: A dim or dark screen does not necessarily mean a bad inverter! It could be a faulty lcd backlight bulb, inverter cable, inverter, or in some cases a motherboard failure. Luke Chi

so...what should i do??? HP Vectra VL400 1.0ghz Pentium 3 512mb PC133 SDRAM 120gb 7200rpm 8mb cache WD1200JB hard drive ATI Radeon 9200 128mb AGP video card

Now your going to need to disassemble that beast to find out if the back light or what ever is defective aren't you? http://search.ebay.com/compaq-manuals_W0QQfnuZ1QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ3QQxpufuZx

Brendan=Hope that web site helps you.I did not find a download for your manual.

thanx street and everyone else HP Vectra VL400 1.0ghz Pentium 3 512mb PC133 SDRAM 120gb 7200rpm 8mb cache WD1200JB hard drive ATI Radeon 9200 128mb AGP video card