Black screen but Taskbar and mouse pointer visible

Hello Forum,

A friend of mine has a Toshiba laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit. He says that since about two weeks the screen turns more and more often black when the computer is on but not in use for some time but the Taskbar and the mouse pointer remain visible. The only thing to do then is to switch the computer forcibly off and on again. Then everything works fine until he leaves the computer alone again for some time ... and very often the same thing happens again. He says that this started some weeks ago and happened only rarely but is now happening at least once every day.

Any idea what this might be and how it can be stopped?

Thanks and greetings - resucami

In Control Panel Power settings, he should be able to turn off screen dimming to save power. That may be related. Or it may be a hardware thing. How old is the machine?