Dead or Backlight Issue? Worth replacing?

[Cod]

Today, I booted up my Linux laptop and the screen kept going extremely dark 10 secs after booting. I did the flash light test and the desktop is faintly visible under light. If I restart the laptop, the screen is perfectly fine again for about 10 secs...then goes extremely dark again.

My first thoughts are the inverter / backlight has crapped out because the machine is a 6-yr old HP. I just wanted to make sure that was the most likely problem before I did anything else. If the LCD has crapped out, how can I go about getting all the information off the machine? Just take a monitor cable and hook it up to another monitor?

Any guidance is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Racer_J]

If the LCD has crapped out, how can I go about getting all the information off the machine? Just take a monitor cable and hook it up to another monitor?

Yes you can do that provided it's not the onboard video that's crapping out. You're next option would be if the drive's content's were already shared over your network. If they aren't, you'll need to remove the drive and connect it to another PC so you can physically see the contents.

I can't help you out with the actual LCD issue but, I did want to get you headed in the right direction on getting your data off the drive.