yessir. I'm actually a tech for the Geek Squad at best buy down here. I've seen oh so many laptops that just get burnt out and what not.

take a look at the lcd when the computer is off, if you look at it at an angle and you see some fractures, of course your LCD would be hosed. if you can see blue blurs around teh screen it could be bleeding, leeding to the resolution that your LCD is once again, hosed lol.
if you checked those things and they're not present then possibly the lamp is blow completely, or the invertor.

There is also a possibility that the LCD mainboard on the back of the LCD where the invertor and signal cable goes in could be f*ed in the a as well.

If i remember correctly the 7140 is maybe an athlon xp based system? maybe a Pentium 4. Good laptops, but if you get voltage fluctuations you can get screwed because the boards are fairly fragile. If you want a data recovery done I could help you there. i've got all the stuff to do it. good luck with the parts. any computer questions you may have I can help ya

 

cool, thanks bro. No fractures and the colors are solid with solid lines, I really hope it's the inverter. You are correct it is the P4.
If this inverter doesn't work, not sure what I'll do.

 

np man.

looks like it's not the power inverter for the LCD. could quite possibly be the onboard graphics chip gone bad, or simply just the signal cable being loose, i've seen that happen before.

 

oh boy, I hope thats not the case

before the screen went to this solid color, it sort of fizzled with horizontal lines. I did a google search and found Toshiba had a similar problem with some of their laptops. The way they described it sounded like what happened to mine so I figured it was worth the $100 to see if that will fix it. I don't think it's the video card because I can hook up an external monitor and it works just fine.......

 

Nope, wasn't the inverter

 

Well, I learned a lesson, get the dang warranty with a laptop!

the wife couldn't stand me anymore, she ended up buying me a new laptop tonight , not quite as nice as the HP was, but it should be capable non-the-less
The NEX was offering some decent prices, got 15% off the laptop plus the no tax deal ended up being about 23% off retail. I MADE SURE to get the extended warranty, so 3yrs total, which is what I would expect a laptop to last, and I'll probably be ready for a new one by then anyway. It covers everything, parts, labor, normal wear and tear, and replacement.

So what did I end up with?

Sony Vaio
1.86 ghz Pentium M 750
2mb L2 cache, 533mhz FSB
512mb DDR2 SDRAM max 2g
100gb hard drive
15.4" screen
DVD+R double layer/DVD RW

 

here's what it looks like:

 

mmmmm.... the sony FS660 is a badass laptop. did you get it from Best Buy? just curious how much you paid after the 15% discount. Also, unless you got the ADH service plan it's not gonna cover sittin on it or complete submersion under water

 

I ended up with the Sony FS760, $1549 - 23% = $1193. I bought it at the Navy Exchange.

 

very nice deal. thought it was the 6 series at first because they have the same body . glad you got a warranty though haha