more info
Some more information:
-When I close and open the laptop at the login screen the screen lights up for a second (still black), then goes dark again.
-When connected to a second monitor through the HDMI port it displayed on the second monitor. I was able to log in and use it like normal. I messed with the multiple monitor settings in windows 7 but the laptop screen remained completely unresponsive.
-When closing and opening the laptop while connected to the second monitor it behaved normally (but the laptop screen never turned on beside the 1 second light-up I mentioned above.
-Uninstalling the graphics adapter in windows 7 and rebooting allows me to log into windows, but after windows reinstalls the driver and I reboot the issue remains.
-Uninstalling it again caused windows to reinstall the standard VGA adapter (not the Geforce 650M that was installed before) and this also allows me to log in, but isn't acceptable to me. It also sets the resolution to 800x600 every time it reboots.
-After doing a system restore to before any problems began, it restored the nvidia driver and the same issue persists.
My conclusion:
The graphics adapter is somehow responsible for shutting the screen off as soon as windows finishes loading. But the computer isn't sleeping as I thought before, the screen is simply shut off as proven by the second monitor which allowed me to use the keyboard and everything normally.
Seeing as how the graphics adapter seems to be the issue, I went to nvidia's website and downloaded the latest beta driver that supports the GeForce 650M, but when running the installer it claims that it can't find the hardware that is required for the driver.
So currently I am still unable to use the laptop screen when booting into windows unless I connected to an external monitor, boot into safe mode, or uninstall the current graphics adapter and use the standard VGA one.
I don't know what to do next..
