Busted laptop

So... My laptop screen broke. The backlight has quit working, but it's still getting information because I can see parts of the screen if I shine a flash light on it at the right angle. When its booting up, i can see the screen just fine, but a few seconds after boot up the backlight craps out. Right now I am using my wife's iPad to type this out and surprisingly I can type on it fairly easily. Anyway, back to the laptop. I got a monitor cable and plugged it up to my tv, but for some reason it wasn't getting the image information to the tv after the back light stops working. The laptop is almost seven years old and it's been dropped multiple times. I'm actually surprised it has lasted as long as it has. The problem now is I have a bunch of songs, pictures and videos that I need to get off of it. Any suggestions on a cheap way to McGyver it for just long enough period to get my files off of it?

The good news is now that the laptop is dead, I get my own iPad!!! Woohoo!

Couple things..

1. Open it up, take out the monitor cable, and plug it back in. It might just be a loose cable.

2. If that doesn't work, take out the hard drive, plug it into an external hard drive box, and plug it into a new laptop. You should be able to access all files from the other hard drive and copy them to the new one.

You're lucky it's just the monitor and not the hard drive itself.. I lost EVERYTHING on my hard drive not too long ago.