Backlight gone on Inspiron 9200?

[Yeti]

I've had this laptop for a couple of years. The last couple of days the screen has been flickering a ton. Now it's gone near 100% dark, I can just about make stuff out on the screen.

I guess the backlight has gone? But when I turn the laptop on the very first screen (the dell loading whatever screen) is fine. All the rest of the BIOS/loading stuff is near invisible though. But when Windows is nearly loaded I can see the mouse cursor very clearly for a split second like normal. Very weird.

So any ideas? And what cost are we looking at to repair this? Assuming the TV-out will still work fine I'll probably just buy a new laptop tomorrow and just hook it up to my monitor when I get back from vacation and get the stuff off it.

[bigalt]

Is it consistent every time, or does/did it flicker randomly and turn off and on?

If the latter, it could be a loose cable-- I had one on my laptop and I fixed it by opening it up and taking the screen cable out and putting it back together. Of course I had a myriad of other issues afterwards, but the screen worked.