After closing laptop lid, can't get out of black screen

Once you left it on sitting idle for that much time a kind of permanent hibernation mode set in where powering it down was the only option you had available. When you know you won't get back to it within a short period of time you are far better simply shutting it down to start with. This is how many laptops work.

One of the main reasons would be conserving battery power. This is why the display will turn off after so long until touching the pad or moving any mouse you have plugged in so the battery charge will last longer. You have to be prepared for this type of situation with anything battery powered to begin with including netbooks, tablets, cell phones., smart phones, etc..

That's the thing about a good number of the more recent even Vista models seeing the same thing over what you might have run into about 10yrs. back. They kind of have their own shutdown/standby mode when not having a sleep or hibernation scheduled. After so long you have to power them down in order to power them up!

Besides the power plans or creating one in 7 the laptop itself likely has it's own automatic shutoff even if you set everything to the never turn off.

The problem I seem to have here despite a recent clean install of Windows and setting each plan plus the custom plan made default to never turn off the display I have to click the power options shortcut to change the constant default 20min. to never when first powering up or after any restart.

I already went through the guide here for seeing the custom plan made default in the registry but even that still sees the default 20min. annoyance return. For the laptop you have there however that would be by manufacturer's design as you would expect from just about any portable or hand held out at this time.

With some laptops you don't even any lid options available. One Toshiba Vista laptop and another HP 7 laptop can both be carried around with the lid down and be right there where you left off since the display remains on when going to carry them from one room to another.

It's not so much the make but particular model series where you may find different options available. With some when you lower the screen it will lock down while others have no lock at all. Some with lid button and others without.

I've seen that one as well. For leaving the laptop unattended while still on for a lengthy period of time with the screen down that would be one idea to try out. But if the laptop has a battery monitor it may still slip into the standby type mode on you there.