I have a Dell Inspiron 8600 that is 6 years old. It's surprisingly still (was lol) a decent machine.


Specs:
60GB hdd (upgraded from 30GB)
1GB RAM (upgraded from 386MB)
Linksys Wireless N PCMCIA card (upgraded from on board Intel Wireless B)
15.4 WXGA
Nvidia Go5200 32MB
Battery lasts about 2-3 hours yet
Windows XP SP3
Pentium M @ 1.4Ghz


Symptoms:
Recently, the laptop has a video issue that happens about a minute after loading Windows. When you boot the machine, the screen looks normal and loads just fine. After about 30 seconds into Windows, the screen goes black but you can still barely make out the wallpaper and apps running. After a forced reboot, it does the exact same thing.


After 6 years, this just started happening. Before I take it apart and attempt to repair it, I was wondering if anyone has any advice as to what to look for. I figure the backlight is the main thing to check out.

Yes, I googled and didn't see anything too exciting.