I unfortunately do not have a cable to hook up an external monitor. I did manage to get my laptop to work again, but I don't really know how it happened. I had taken out the memory stick and noticed that my laptop's caps lock key stayed steady when I turned on the computer (although it still rebooted itself...) so I figured it had something to do with the memory. I kept taking it out and putting it back in and restarting the laptop but it didn't work. I finally got frustrated with it and reinstalled the RAM stick and while I was turning the laptop over to restart it, it slipped and fell about 1-2 inches onto the desk. I turned on the computer and even though the screen still didn't show anything, the hard drive booted up normally. I rebooted the computer again and it worked fine. It seems ok now except for the fact that whenever I shut the lid and reopen it, the screen stays blank and I have to reboot the computer. I have absolutely no idea what is wrong and what I did that fixed it and I am wondering if it is a motherboard issue of some sort.
Anyways, hopefully this post made sense!! :)

Reseating the ram did the trick - one or both needed reseating, usually because of a jar to the notebook.  Your origional symptoms were for ram not being seen and needing reseating.