Thursday, my daughter’s Dell Inspiron laptop was working fine. She finished as usual, just closing the lid, which puts the laptop in suspend/hibernate mode.

Friday evening, she opened the lid, and got … nothing. It was plugged into power, the indicator light was on, but the screen remained totally blank. She tried moving the mouse, clicking buttons, pressing keys. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Finally, in desperation, she hit the power button.

When she booted it back up, she got the comforting splash screen, then it cleared, and … nothing. Just a little blinking cursor in the upper left corner.

Saturday, she called me and said, “I need help.”

I gathered up my usual live-CDs: Knoppix, PCLOS-2007, Minime-2008, Mandriva One; and headed over to her place.

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