Laptop Backlight Off

[Timie Milie <milstead@compsci.bristol.ac.uk>]

I am running Debian Sarge on an old NEC laptop.
Occassionaly the laptop backlight turns off shortly after the first part 
of the boot process and can only be convinced to come back on by 
repeatadly closing and opening the lid.
The problem occurs in X and the console.
Sometimes a reboot fixes the problem.
Switching APM on and off doesn't seem to fix the problem.
Do I need to recompile the kernel? What options should I enable/disable?

Thanks,

Tim.