Q: I have a probook 4710s that I have been barely using. It is running on windows vista 32bit.

the p r o b l e m I encountered is that the screen suddenly goes black for no reason at all during the first few minutes of use. It seems to be completely black, but it is more like it is dimmed out to 1%... you can barely see what is being displayed. Basicaly, a blacksrcreen.

I tried turning it off, and on again, and the problem continues. Sometimes it will come right back, only to blackout again. Other times it blacksout and it won't come on, no matter how long I wait.

does any body with a 4710s have the same type of issue?

A:

Have you connected it to an external display to see if the same  thing happens?

If there’s nothing displayed on your laptop’s LCD screen, then you should use an external display to test it. This is a very essential part which may very convenience way to test the LCD display failure.
you should be careful. First you should ensure the external display is in good working order. Usually with a high-density D-Shell 15 pin VGA connector, but some might feature a DVI connector also, Plug the external display connecter at the back of the laptop to either the VGA or DVI input and then choose to switch the display video output from its own display to external display.

 
There are several ways depending on the Make of your laptop to switch it to external display
The “Fn” key is mainly located on the lower-left corner of the keyboard, usually between the CTRL key and ALT. Key, If you are unable to find the switch for your specific model, then try searching the function keys in you user manual or you can get the information on the laptops website.
Here are a few of the examples for some of the laptops
HP (COMPAQ) laptops, pressing Fn+F4 combination keys will switch video output mode until you could see images on the external display.