I have a Compaq Presario 12XL300 laptop which I've owned for years. We keep it up pretty well and it was working well but one day the screen went blank. The display turns on but is blank and turns off when the computer is powered down, any thoughts on what could be wrong? Do all computers have video cards and if so, if it goes bad would it cause this symptom? I’m hoping to borrow a monitor to try that next but would like to have other troubleshooting procedures just in case it is not corrected with a different monitor. I’ve taken the computer completely apart and did not find any signs of burn components or loose connections; it doesn’t even smell like an overheated component or board. Any instructions, thoughts or web resources on trouble shooting you provide (baby steps please) would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your input.

sometimes the video cards just burn out they have various spans depending on the usage or amount og gaming etc they will die on you eventually and most of the time can be replaced, and most likely by a prof

Does your computer make any weird beeps when you try to turn it on? My video card died recently & the computer told me so by giving me a series of beeps when I would turn on my computer. And yes all computers have to have either a video card or a video chip built into the mother board. Do you get any video at all? I can't tell based on your description of the problem. If you do get video but it goes off but can come on later then it might be that your computer is set to turn it off after a certain amount of time of inactivity to save electricity. This is normal & can be turned off. It could also be that your computer is set to power off after a certain amount of inactivity. Go to control panel, click on classic menu, & then click on power management. Click here for more info on it. However you have an entirerly different problem if you never get video so lets start here.