Sony Vaio Screen Dim?

[StreetSermonz]

I have a Sony Vaio laptop that is about a year and a half old (don't have the model number available) and a few months ago the screen started to go VERY dim once XP started to load up. The display is fine when loading up until XP starts to load, then it becomes very dim, almost impossible to see. I tried reformatting and reinstalling XP. I tried running the recovery disk. I even opened up the laptop to look at the video card connection, which looked fine.

Has anybody run into this problem before? Any suggestions on how I can pinpoint what the issue is?

Also, I am not too familiar with XP and tried to format the master boot record, but I guess that XP is not based on DOS anymore so when I type 'format /mbr' it says 'invalid command'. Would formatting the mbr even help?

Any suggestions, comments, solutions are greatly appreciated!

[glc]

Format /mbr was never a valid command. Fdisk /mbr was with DOS and Win9x. What are you trying to do?

It sounds like *something* in there is turning the backlight off when Windows is starting to load. I have no idea what could cause that. If it's still on warranty I'd be contacting Sony.

[StreetSermonz]

Thanks, I'm probably just confused, I thought there might be a virus in the mbr, it was just a random thought.

Anyways, I'm out of warranty, but I'm still going to call Sony tomorrow. I believe it is either a backlight issue or faulty wiring, but that still doesn't explain why it only dims when XP loads up. Once I get some info I'll post it up.

If anyone else has any comments, suggestions, feel free to share.

[glc]

Connect a monitor to the VGA port and see if it does the same thing.