I think it's from "beautiful widgets". I installed "PowerControl" widget & it has an icon on the right that looks like it is a brightness control. On this machine it is a backlight off button! Doh! I had to get the desk lights just right & try to see the widget. Luckily it's large enough & I was able to see it well enough to see where the button was & turn the backlight back on! System reset didn't fix it BTW, after reboot, the screen went back to black. Thankfully the widget was still on the screen, 'cause I wouldn't have been able to access it if I had had to do anything else to get to the button.Shit, I hate it when a plan goes bad.kev