Well now the memory reseat theory is dead. Did it all before I fired it up this morning and to no avail, Black Screen. Man is this frustrating. I can tell as soon as I fire it up if it's going to because I'll see the screen light up a little when I first fire it up and it works. When I see no light I know it's going to black screen. I guess the next thing to try is to back it up and re-install from scratch. Will need to see if ASUS will send me a Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit disc for re-install though. Fun, Fun, Fun. Argh!
Do you always see the post screen?
Then the screen flickers and (usually) goes out?
Meanwhile, the HDD light is blinking away like the system is in fact running?
Get an external monitor and plug it in; fool with the FN + F4 keys (usually the combination on laptops) --- to get the external to be recognized.
I bring all of this up because I have a Fujitsu A6030 (2007 era) and the "inverters" (not sure if that is the correct term or not) went out causing the phenomenon I described -- I always see at least part of post screen; then screen flickers/dims, then black - but the system is undoubtedly booting up and running.
I figured out that was the case after I plugged an external VGA monitor to the laptop. A hardware expert figured out it was the inverter (again - not sure if that was the part or not that went bad).
Regards. . .
jcgriff2