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My laptop (new 2 months ago), an ASUS K50AD running Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit), sometimes fails to start the backlight to the LCD screen when it wakes up from sleep mode, making it virtually impossible to see what is on the screen. I can't discern any pattern from when it does it, except that it seems to come in clusters.

The backlight has no trouble starting when waking from hibernation or a cold boot. Trying to adjust brightness settings while the backlight is not working yields no results. My monitor driver and graphics card driver are both up-to-date (as is my ATK driver... I don't know what this does, but it was mentioned in a Google search result when I was trying to find a solution to my problem).

Could anyone give me any information on what is causing this and how I might fix it?

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Boot from a live Linux (Ubuntu for instance) disc. If the problem continues to happen within Linux than it's hardware. If not its probably Windows 7.

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good suggestion, always good to differentiate. Also note, when the backlight fails to come back on, does the computer still function? (ie, does the hard drive light flash, if you have hotkeys for your media player set up, does it still respond to play and pause) – MaQleod Nov 7 '10 at 19:44
Good idea, but unfortunately the results were inconclusive. I didn't manage to get the backlight to fail in a Fedora boot (after thirty sleep-wakeup tries), but after doing the same amount on the Windows boot, it worked properly. This isn't surprising; I can often go multiple wakeups across a week without any problems. – Adam Nov 8 '10 at 4:30
@MaQleod: Yes, everything else works. My temporary fix to getting the backlight to work is to input my password on the log screen, push the windows button and right-arrow buttons, enter into hibernate mode and then wake it up from that, so all the associated functionality there (working hard drive, logging in, start menu) all works. – Adam Nov 8 '10 at 4:33
@user54823: That will make it difficult to trouble shoot. I suspect that it is a hardware issue or loose cable. Before you take the laptop apart I would create a computer image using "Easeus Disk Copy 2.3" (Or whatever imaging software you trust), backup your data and reinstall the OS. If this doesn't fix the problem than it is more than likely a hardware issue. – MHrappstead Nov 8 '10 at 4:41
@user54823: Well seeing that putting the computer in hibernate mode fixes the problem I'm starting to think its a software problem now. Make sure Windows 7 is up to date and possibly try running an error check on the hard drive. – MHrappstead Nov 8 '10 at 4:48
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