Toshiba Laptop Dead Screen

Hello. I do not have the device with me now, it is in another city. My sister just called me and told me that her Toshiba Satellite laptop screen is staying black when she boots it, even though all the light indicators are working and the device itself is making noise normally. Not sure what caused it.
The story behind:
The laptop is an old model, Satellite l500-14x, purchased back in 2010. OS was WinVista, but we upgraded it last year to Win7.
She told me that she had ESET run a scan, but left it an-attended so it probably went into sleep mode mid-process, because she later found it so.
When she pressed the power button, like always, the devise started running again, only this time the screen stayed dark.
Not knowing what to do, she just forced the laptop to shut down by keeping the power button pressed down. Then she tried to boot it again. Same issue. She tried 2 more times. She is now concerned about saving her everything important in her computer. I told her she should try to connect the laptop to another monitor via vga to see if it works. Maybe she'll be able to do it tomorrow, and I will tell you more.
Any solutions about the screen issue?

Once she connects the other monitor, she will be able to see what is going on, if the other monitor works.

That is the first thing to try, unless you have an identical laptop, in which case you could swap hard drives and see which laptop then has the problem. Since it is old, you might be able to pick one up cheap on Ebay.

Here's a Toshiba Satellite Pro L500-EZ1520 15.6" on Ebay for $49.99 -- has no hard drive.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Toshiba-Sat...EAAOSwR6RaN~L1

My guess is that it is compatible enough with your sister's laptop (and it has a bigger screen) to where you could put her hard drive into this one, and it would probably work. But that is only a guess.

But I would first plug in an external monitor, and do as much troubleshooting as I could. If after doing that I was reasonably certain that the dead display was caused by faulty hardware and not by a Windows issue, I would probably take a chance and purchase the Ebay laptop.

mrjimphelps said:

Once she connects the other monitor, she will be able to see what is going on, if the other monitor works.

That is the first thing to try, unless you have an identical laptop, in which case you could swap hard drives and see which laptop then has the problem. Since it is old, you might be able to pick one up cheap on Ebay.

Here's a Toshiba Satellite Pro L500-EZ1520 15.6" on Ebay for $49.99 -- has no hard drive.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Toshiba-Sat...EAAOSwR6RaN~L1

Thanks a lot for the reply, but all you suggest I already have considered, even the ebay solution. However shipping to Greece takes too long, and is not always possible.
Anyways it is most possibly a hardware issue, but I ought to try and find other possible causes.

Sonamsopmist said:

Thanks a lot for the reply, but all you suggest I already have considered

So did you try to connect an external monitor?

looked said:

So did you try to connect an external monitor?

Not yet, I cannot do it myself, being about 150 miles away from the laptop. I'll update later, after my sister finds a monitor to connect to.

Sonamsopmist said:

Not yet, I cannot do it myself, being about 150 miles away from the laptop. I'll update later, after my sister finds a monitor to connect to.

You could order a cheap 19" monitor from a shop where you can return without problems and get the money back