Thank you for the advice. The computer is about 3 years old and is no longer under warranty. I tried reinstalling the video driver as suggested, but I am still having the issue.

I have a Dell Inspiron 1526 laptop. For the past 2 days the monitor has been suddenly dimming to the point that I can not see anything but a very, very faint image. It's essentially blacking out. The funny thing is that all I have to do is close the laptop and reopen it and the monitor is back to full brightness. I have checked all of the power and brightness settings and nothing seems out of the ordinary.

Unfortunately, the frequency...