Could be a couple of things...
On my Toshiba Satellite, there's simply a little button that gets pressed in when the top is closed -- it just disconnects power from the monitor. I can press it with my finger and the monitor turns on and off.
On some laptops, the button is a bios trigger which windows picks up as a queue to suspend. It comes right back up when you open it up again.
On my toshiba, if I issue the apm -s command to suspend the machine, then hit the power button to bring it back up, I see something very similar to what you describe.
Could be that linux is trying to suspend when you shut the lid, and not successfully recovering from the suspend ?
Try removing the acpi or apm module and closing/opening the lid. That'll at least help narrow down what exactly the problem is.
Another thing that I have seen, regardless whether it's a laptop or desktop, is video cards and drivers getting confused about power management settings, and having to be rebooted for the original video configuration to come back. A power saving signal (maybe triggered by closing the lid?) could be confusing your hardware/drivers in such a way.
To try this out, try these commands from an xterm.
Code:
xset +dpms
xset dpms force off
xset dpms force standby
xset dpms force suspend
Touch a key to bring the monitor back up.
If you get the same result, then it's an issue with the x server and dpms, or "energy star" compatability.
Hope some of this helps
--Shade
