Bug#699402: Please close this bug - it was actually hardware-related.

[The Eclectic One]

Hello,

Upon further investigation, I did find that it appeared that the LCD
inverter was involved (had this error message from the BIOS diagnostics:
LCD inverter detection FAIL 1000-0323) but that turned out not to be the
real cause of the problem.  The real problem was the lid switch, which
somehow had been stuck.  This obviously powers down the inverter and
shuts down the backlight.  Thus the detection that fails.  The nvidia
driver, in wheezy, never turns on the backlight and the screen stays dark.
In jessie, the backlight turns on starting at the edges and becomes
gradually brighter towards the center, like the driver is increasing
the brightness and never stops (until it reaches the maximum) because
it's not getting any feedback from the powered down inverter.

When this happens, it is possible to log in through the network and
access the system.  Loading of the nvidia driver has failed at that
point and is not loaded, per lsmod.

The nouveau driver, which has other problems (see bug 689748) turns on
the display after the initial BIOS screen and early boot steps and then
the computer works fine, except for the lock-ups that occasionally happen
and the fuzzy font issues, as described in bug 689748.