Screen going completely grey upon starting laptop

[sepandee]

Hi

I posted this 2 months ago but I'll post it agian, as I have updates.
I have a HP Zt3000 laptop, 768MB RAM, 60GB 5400RPM, 1.7 Pentium M. Around 2 months ago, my screen started going weird on me. Sometimes, perhaps once out of three or four times, when I turned it on from shut down or hibernation, the hard drive would run but the screen would change colors from total black to total grey, and that's it (but hard drive and windows was running). This problem also happened when I restarted my computer, BUT NOT WHEN I turned my computer on from STANDBY. The solution to the problem was to turn the computer on and off, a couple of times, sometimes just once sometimes 5-10 times, until the screen would come back again. The problem continued until last week when I turned it off around a 100 times (yes, I know, it's bad) and the screen didn't come back on (just kept giving me a completely grey screen). I had a monitor at home so I plugged it in and everything was loading up fine, just my laptop screen was not working. So I took it to Staples Business Depot and after charging me $50, they said they'll do a diagnostic. It took them a week and they got back to me today, saying that it's a problem with the motherboard and it's gonna cost me $500 Canadian (around $400 USD) to buy a new motherboard and install it. Does that sound right? What should I do? SHoudl I buy my own mortherboard and get someone to install it cheaper? I don't trust these guys.

Please help. THis sucks.
ANd thanks.

[VenturSum]

Has anyone else experienced this problem.  How did you resolve it?
My ZT3000 is 4 years old.  It works fine.. except the back lighting of the monitor does not work.

I can barely see what's on the screen.  I have to shine a light on it.

When I plug in a monitor, I can see what should be on the ZT3000''s monitor just fine.

The HP ZT3000 works fine and I don't want to trash this monitor if I can fix it.

Thank you,
John O