my laptop screen goes black

My laptop screen goes black when the brightness is at max after about 10-20 seconds, none of the power managing stuff is on so it's not that. When I dim my screen it doesn't go black at all. It's like 3-4 years old now, a compaq one. I was searching on google and found an answer that says the backlight is probably going to die, another was that someone had the same problem but it was fine in safe mode, and the advice was to upgrade the video driver. I haven't tried using it in safe mode yet, too lazy right now. Anyone know of this problem?

The only past experience I've had with the problem is where the backlight is wearing out/becoming detached, but you should probably try and narrow down your problem area before you jump to any conclusions: