Dell studio 1535 display problems

i got this dell studio 1535 around 4 or 5 months ago. its been all fine and dandy untill a few weeks back.
i was using it and through a series of events involving my laptop and my sister is dropped and hit the floor, when it was closed. since then whenever i was using it, after around 3 or so hours the screen would turn black and to get it back id have to restart.
now when i say black most people presume just like when its shut down, but it isnt. the screen goes really dark, but you can still see whats on the screen only its so dark you can barely make out anything. in order to see anything you have to tilt the screen in the light. so long story short it looked like it was off only it wasnt, the display was on. i found this out when i pressed the windows key on the keyboard to open the windows start menu and saw a very very dull movement on the screen.

so anyway, back to it. yesterday, i lend my sis the laptop for an hour, and i get it back and the screen is black as it happened before, but when i restart nothing comes up at all. the screen goes back to being in this really dark state from the start up. i have a feeling its not the monitor plug on the motherboard because if that was unplugged then i wouldnt see anything, but i can see slight images on the screen, though its far far far too dark to really make out anything for the laptop screen to be of any use. im actually using the laptop now, just its plugged into a monitor.

does anyone know what the problem might be and how i could go about getting it sorted??

 

If the display still displays images just fine, but loses the backlight, then it seems you have a problem with the backlight, or possibly the inverter if you have a CCFL display.