I have a Dell laptop that's about 5 years old now and worked fine up until last summer. I went on a trip for about 3 and a half weeks and when I came back and tried to turn on the laptop, it would start up but nothing would come on the screen. Once or twice I saw an extremely faint image of the Windows XP load screen, but other than that nothing, and definitely nothing if I try it now. I've also tried connecting it to an external monitor, but I get nothing to show up this way either. Just wondering if anyone has any ideas about what the problem is? I suspect the video card died for whatever reason, but just wondered if anyone might know if it's something else.