PCG GRX650 - LCD gone???

What do you experts think of this. Sony VAIO PCG GRX650 - XP Home - HDD 20% full. One day, turned it on - screen looks black as night - no video. Boots up, I see the SONY logo mid screen but it's orang-ey. Logo jiggles a little, flickers wildly for 1/2 second then disappears to black. As the system continues booting I can juuuust barely see the Windows log on. If you're not right on top of it, you'd think the screen is still black. There are two users and if I very carefully watch the screen and at the right angle, I can hit either one and get logged on. Again, I can just barely (and I mean BARELY) see the desktop, the icons, the Start Menu/Task Bar.

OK, I know what you're thinking, hit Fn-F4 to bring up the brightness. It's already maxxed out. How do I know? Because I can pipe into an external VGA monitor and the video is perfect. It toggles between LCD only - LCD and External - No video without complaint. I see that the brightness OSD indicator (BARELY visible on the LCD, fully visible on the ext monitor) for brightness is fully white (means it's maxxed). That tells me the integ graphic array probably isn't damaged. This unit is TV-aware and has provisions for two screens in XP's Video Props panel. When I "identify" a big number "1" appears. It will not identify screen 2 because no TV is asserted.

Since I know very little about the VAIO, what conclusion should I draw? LCD is toast, and we should find the nearest junk heap? There's a control in the BIOS for this that I haven't found (can't see the BIOS screens that well either)? The back-lighting is turned off and you haven't figured out how to turn it on? There's a loose connector somewhere and I have to rip everything apart in the case to find it? The power supply/battery chain hasn't got enough juice to run the LCD? Pay the $700 to have the LCD replaced?

What's the concerted opinion of you folks?

Thanks.

H