Laptop is dark. Backlight or inverter?

Laptop screen no longer lights up. I can see stuff on the screen if I shine a flashlight at it so I know the screen is good and there is just a problem with the lighting.

I'm just wondering if its the backlight or inverter before i order a replacement and hoping I could draw on others experience.

The only symptom that might help diagnose is that whenever the backlight turns off and back on (or should if the backlight system were working) such as at bootup or whenever the screen resolution changes, there is a brief pinkish flash (eighth of a second).

Interesting, in my general experience, it is usually the back light that goes out on monitors and laptop screens which we replace after ordering a new one from Dell.

I'm unsure if the pinkish flash is a symptom of another issue though.

Sorry for the indecisive answer!

I thought laptops now don't have inverters? Since it's all LED backlit now and it's just an LVDS cable going from the motherboard to the screen.

Backlight.

Just replaced one on a laptop I was given.

$100 later ebay sent me a new one. Popped it in and 10 minutes later I was surfing the web with it.