I have an old Dell Inspiron 7000, on which I recently installed Windows 2000
Pro. Since then, the laptop sometimes reboots with the backlight off. I
have to plug in an old monitor to use the machine. After a number of uses,
it will reboot with the backlight on again. There doesn't seem to be any
system or CMOS setting that will correct the problem. I notice a previous
poster is having a similar problem with a completely different computer
under XP. Is this some kind of driver problem?

jjrobinson2 <jjrobinson2@death.to.spam.houston.rr.com> wrote:
Try instead of rebooting, powering off the laptop, and powering it
back on.
It may simply be that the backlight tube is nearing the end of its
life, and will not start reliably.