Jeff Lasman wrote: > I don't think a software install can cause that.
I generally agree on this, it's pretty unlikely that a software install could cause this. There are however, some potential vectors for software to damage hardware - I'm just not sure if this is one of them. If you look at 'acpitool -h', you'll see there are command-line switches to set the command-line brightness of certain laptops (IBM Thinkpads & Toshiba Satellites mostly). It lets you choose a value from 0..7. I occasionally use this command in a script to dim my LCD backlight for some reason. I have used every value between 0 & 7 on my Thinkpad without causing any damage to a backlight. I've also learned not to set it to 0 unless I am absolutely sure the script will eventually set it back to a value that I can read the screen... :) I don't know if HP laptops have the potential to have their backlight controlled by software, but if they did, and this command was somehow run on your laptop, could it have poked the value 7 into a backlight controller, and somehow that damaged the backlight? I doubt alsaconf would have any interaction with acpitool, so it's really just likely that your backlight finally burned out. I agree with William about repairing it yourself, and the parts are usually on eBay.
