diagnosis:laptop, totally black screen, power on

the computer will boot (you may not notice it if you have a password because there is no sound until you login). if you don't have a password, you will hear the startup sound if you have not disabled sound effects or muted or turned down the sound.

this is caused by a faulty lid switch. take it to a manufacturer-authorized repair shop in town. you must look up the location by going through the service department of the manufacturer. this can happen because the lid gets opened and closed a lot and the switch wears out.

I don't recommend this, but there's a 50% chance fix if you don't care about the laptop and you're in the middle of nowhere.

about switches

in electronics, switches are rated for a certain number of actuations, and it says so on the data sheet when you buy it. keyboard switches can be rated for 20 million keypresses for a $40 keyboard, or 10,000 if they are cheap. household electrical panel circuit breakers are rated for 1000 actuations (either direction) - just read the specifications. for a lid switch, it may be rated at 1000 actuations, maybe more. so you can figure that there are 2 actuations per day opening and closing the lid. 1000/2=500 days or about a little over 1.370 years. laptop manufacturers don't publish the specs for their lid switches.

for people who like to turn their water heater on and off every day to save electricity, you will get cold showers and be paying for a new circuit breaker every 1 year and 4 months. it doesn't help the heater coil either possibly...

I would say that my mother's laptop's lid switch lasted for about 5 maybe 5.5 years, which as a guesstimate is about 5×365.25×2=3653 to 5.5×365.25×2=4018 actuations.

live in remote area with no service shops?

• mail the laptop to the closest manufacturer-authorized repair shop. you will have to look them up through the service department.
• try the lid switch fix if you can't do the above and you are REALLY DESPERATE.