You know how there's a button the presses when you close the laptop? Maybe it's not workin' properly. Hit it a few times. It might also be locked at the BIOS level. *Or* have no Operating System installed. But then you should still be able to see some BIOS output. So bah.
Dunno, try fiddling around with things until you find something that works.
If it has a VGA-out try hooking it up to your monitor and see if you get anything on there. To see if the LCD panel doesn't work. Also, there might be a 'monitor sleep' button that stops it from going on. But then again, your DVD-Rom should have been working all through this. But then again, both problems could be unrelated. So you never know.
Hope this post was of some help.
Update: I also remembered. Some laptops, if not all, have a button that toggles output to VGA and to the LCD panel. Try hitting that a couple times to see if it goes on.