SOLVED: Laptop won't boot and shows blank screen

VEGAS BABY VEGAS 

If you traveled much you know traveling is stressful both for you and for your laptop. What if computer stops working suddenly? Read the whole story with the happy ending below...

If you traveled much you know traveling is stressful both for you and for your laptop. I was just waiting on my plane at the Las Vegas airport. I used the laptop on and off in Vegas. There are very few locations on the Strip with reasonably priced or free WiFi. More on that some other time. I was able to play around with the laptop sleep again and had problems booting the laptop with the DVD inserted. That's even though my DVD writer/player device is disabled. And the DVD lights keep coming up... Trying to boot from the disabled DVD? Oh well. Back to the main story...

CHECK DISK INTERRUPTED BY PLANE LEAVING VEGAS

I decided to do a "quick" check disk as I had over an hour left before the plane was leaving. As I mentioned I had some problems booting with a DVD inserted so I wanted to make sure the hard disk was in good shape. So I fire up the check disk to be scheduled on reboot. I reboot the laptop. Check disk starts and... takes forever. My group was called for boarding. How to interrupt checkdisk? I knew of no other way but to turn the laptop off, pack it and rush to the plane.

BACK IN LA - LAPTOP REFUSING TO BOOT

How would you feel if on boot, the hard drive light doesn't even come up and you end up with blank screen? At first I thought I crashed the hard disk when I pulled the plug on check disk. Hard disks are sensitive to this kind of abuse, right? At least when I still had the problem with laptop not booting from sleep mentioned earlier, the hard disk light came up. I'm talking about my Acer Aspire 5770z by the way. Now watch this.

WHAT I TRIED, UNSUCCESSFULLY

I tried a number of things. Tried resetting the computer by plugging out the battery and plugging out the power cord and pressing the on/off button for 60 seconds. 4o seconds is a long time. No help. I tried turning the laptop on and off numerous times, to no avail. So I just gave up, and went on to read a book I got in Vegas.

SURPRISE - A SIGN OF LIFE FROM THE LAPTOP

Imagine my surprise when, still reading the book, I suddenly heard the laptop's fan starting to blow. A sign of life! Just waiting patiently. Did the temperature rise? Oh well, I turned the laptop off, back on, and, voila, the hard disk came up and the vista booting proceeded. Not 100% though. But after a few attempts, the laptop came up completely and is now fully functional.

BOTTOM LINE - TIME HEALS ALL WOUNDS AND ESPECIALLY THE NON-BOOTING VISTA

Don't give up on your laptop when it's not booting. It could be that the system needs a high temperature kick. Maybe the disk self-heals after starting. Who knows?  But my solution for this case of laptop not booting was to wait with a laptop turned on. Maybe about 1/2 hour. Something like that.

DID THIS SOLVE YOUR PROBLEM? 

What about you? Were you able to resolve your booting problem by just waiting for the system to heat up enough and start properly? I wonder how common this solution could be. Definitely better than sending the laptop for a repair. Out of warranty, I'm sure the cost would be at least a couple hundred and who knows, they may need to wipe out your disk with all your data and settings! What a prospect.

LEAVE ME A COMMENT, BUDDY

Regardless, let me know in a comment below what kind of a problem you had that brought you to read this page. And let me know if you were able to fix your problem with your laptop or not. Either way, ok!?

92 comments:

Anonymous said...

Having the same problem with a Hp Dv 6000,turns on and shuts itself off,does this repetedly,then shuts down completly.Will try what you did.Kinda between a rock and a hard place,currently in Antarctica for 4 more months,and really dont have a computer repair store handy,and not looking forward to 4 more months without my laptop.

Matt @ Annoyances-Resolved: Laptop Troubles Resolved said...

Hi! Great to have a commenter from Antarctica! In your case, professional computer repair would cost more than a couple $100, if at all possible! And, let me know if the solution worked for you. It could just be the temperature!

Steve Radich said...

Hard drives many times will make a "clicking" noise before they fail - If you are having intermittent problems AND a clicking noise then you want to backup everything **ASAP** and buy a new drive.

Some laptops the disk drive slide in and can have a bad connection there – You can usually removed the disk drive and re-insert it to resolve this issue. This can cause all kinds of odd problems, usually at boot (after being moved in laptop bag it would be noticeable, usually when using it there wasn't enough movement to cause a problem).

I wrote a blog post a while back laptops not turning on, you can view it here:

http://www.bitshop.com/Blogs/tabid/95/EntryId/34/Help-My-laptop-wont-turn-on.aspx

april said...

my sister has dell vostro 1500
when she pushes the power button on her computer it will start up and goes to the dell loading screen and then the screen turns black and the computer cuts off do u have any suggestions

Disclosure said...

Yeah, my suggestion is to patiently do it again from start. Do you notice any differences? Also, press F12 or F8 during startup. Let us know what happens.

tngtrekkie said...

Here is another possible solution:
Author: tngtrekkie
Comment:
My fixed worked.........
Symptoms:
- Vista boots ut fine in safe mode. In normal mode, I can hear the boot up sounds and HDD light indicates it is processing but nothing on the laptop screen, all is black screen not even a cursor and desktop is not seen anywhere.
Fix I did:
1. Start Safe Mode (backup all important files to HDD as I was planning on re-installing if system restore did not work).
2. Perform System Restore (I had windows update 2 night ago and my system restore only had one restore point to choose)
3. PC boot in normal mode, I can see windows logo and my desktop screen.. yohoo.. however, after about 1 minute windows screen goes blank and I am back to my blank screen problem again.
4. I connect s-video cable from laptop to my TV and I can see my desktop on the TV screen. So I press 'Fn' 'f4' (HP laptop) to toggle between the diffrent display modes and finally I can see the desktop on my laptop screen.
5. Did a re-boot and after booting up, my PC is back to normal no black screen.

A thing to note is that I had not used the other display modes before like output to s-video so very strange how my pc was kinda stuck in this mode. The fix is just to do step #4, but I just describe the whole process here in case someone has exactly the same problem.

Hope this helps

Anonymous said...

With my computer (Sony Vaio VGN-FS760/W), the lights come on and just stay on (they usual shut off after it boots). It did the same exact thing when I installed too much memory. Anyhow, I switched the memory, un/reinstalled the battery and no go. I have an enclosure that I can stick the hard-drive in to connect it to another computer and it works fine (except I can't open my daughters documents; I get an "access denied" dialog box, and she wasn't password protected). I'm stumpted.

Disclosure said...

Anon, The lights on the Sony may be telling you something. Check the Users Manual. I take it the computer is otherwise unusable? Tell us more and maybe we can help.

Anonymous said...

well,the same problem is getting to my head..........

I cant live without playing world of warcraft for 1 day and i did do that....but.....i feel weak and really need some help

the lights come on but its just pitch black and then cuts off

my mom says that its over warranty and i tried to tell her to just call the hp place but she doesnt listen

Ive tried everyting and i mean EVERYTHING to get it working but no dice

So plss PLSS help me im dying from a disease people get from not playing mmorpgs for periods of time :(

*note:that only applies if you are addicted to the pc not if you only played it for a year because ive been playing for 5 YEARS

Disclosure said...

Annonymous, thanks for sharing your travails. It is terrible when your laptop doesn't get up and you can not play your favorite game, or go to your favorite websites. I also understand your mom. She probably feels that since laptop is out of warranty, the HP won't want to help. That is just not true. You can call HP and they may be able to give you some valuable free advice. Let us know what you ended up doing. Also, I will have a different solution by later tonight, so just go directly to http://annoyances-resolved.blogspot.com and check out this other solution. The other solution also includes PATIENCE so muster some patience ok? When you say CUTS OFF, do you mean the computer shuts off by itself? Because that is what I'll write about in the upcoming post!

Anonymous said...

I found this a bit too late, but I had an issue with Vista giving me an error about my USB device not being recognized. I'm not terrible with computers and I spent a lot of time trying to fix it before surrendering because I was at work and couldn't justify just teching my computer all shift.

I personally still had my warranty and sent it with a friend into town - an hour away, and she was attending a football game. Long story short, by the time the game was over and she'd made it to the store, the tech there booted it and it worked without any problem at all. I've resolved not to use the same USB port - or even the actual USB device I had plugged in - until I get Windows 7, but you were right.

Time heals all wounds.
Or at least some of them. :P

Disclosure said...

Thanks for the testimonial. Advice above works!

Karen King said...

My daughter has a brand new (3 weeks old) Dell Inspiron 1545. Tonight she noticed the battery was running low, so closed it to put it to sleep and went to get the AC lead from upstairs. On plugging in the AC lead she opened the laptop and the screen was dead. We have tried the "take out battery and hold down power button" fix, and tried pressing F8, F12 and Alt-Ctrl-Del, and also leaving it on for an hour and waiting to no avail. Is there anything else at all we can try to wake it up as if we take it back to the shop it has to go via her father 2 hours away? Wer cannot dismantle anything as that will invalidate the warranty.

Disclosure said...

Karen, taking the laptop back to the shop while it is still in warranty is a great idea. Glad you tried a few suggestions. Did you try other solutions from this blog? Maybe just search for "sleep" in the left pane to find other possibilities.

Another thing you will read in one of the latest blog posts was: When you are in a "panic mode" you tend to try and push many keys that you normally wouldn't. In your case perhaps Fn-F4 or Fn-F5 or Fn-F6. They may have something to do with the screen not showing anything.

Also you could try plugging in an external monitor if you have one handy.

Hope that helps, let me know if any of the suggestions worked.

Karen King said...

Thank you for your suggestions. We did try the F key combinations but unfortunately without success, and oddly the Dell helpline in Delhi tried to suggest we had at it with a Philips screwdriver! We finally took it back to PC World and swapped it for one from Acer, as I have had an Acer for 18 months now without any issues.
Thanks again for your help,

Karen

Anonymous said...

here in Holland I have a problem with my acer aspire 7520, 2 years old, it simply died on me. Turn it on, you hear the fan starting, then it clicks and goes dead. This it keeps doing continually, also I can not turn it off with the button, i have to remove the feed.
Repairs told me everything works, cpu, bios etc etc still it does not start up.
I check a lot of forums and find heaps people with similar problems with acer laptops.

I now buy packard bell only to find out is has acer parts and toshiba motherboard, so you do not know what you buy at all.

Matt @ annoyances resolved said...

Karen, Good to hear your issue was resolved quickly. Warranty helps a lot while you have it.

Anonymous from Holland, Check out this other post, which describes a similar experience as you have: vista laptop not booting. It definitely shows 2 things: Patience can help. And the click does not necessary mean it is a dreaded "click of death". Check the other post and comment back if that helped. It did help me.

Anonymous said...

Hi just wanted to say I had this exact same problem with my acer and the solution of leaving it on for a while to heat up and then switching on/off worked like a charm. Thank you!

Igor Mateski said...

hey, I found your blog on kyoskea. I'm also doing a blog on PC mischief and other tweaks. Would you like to exchange links and help each other in our work? If yes, please emali me at imateski_AT_gmail dot com

Unknown said...

hi Matt, i have a sony vaio pcg-382L i really dont like to bother people with my story, but you seem to be really caring in your posts, and i wanted to double check with you, if your "time heals all wounds" fix would apply to me. i opened a lid and computer did not wake up from either sleep or hibernation. when i press power it does its thing, all though the hdd seems to fade away and whole proses is frozen. at the same time nothing ever shows on the screen, the power indicator is showing that its on, the battery indicator flashes 2 times then waits for same time interval then flashes again 2 times and so on(LLnnLLnn..- L=light n=nothing) . the hdd indicator is only shown when the computer is initially turned on and then nothing. i read somwhere that it may be the end of the mother board. i tried to attach external monitors, nothing there, the hdd works fine, when attached to the external adaptor. when i boot the computer and try to press f1 f2 and multiple times -usually that makes any computer freak out and beep, this one does nothing. do i have a dead computer on my heands? do i need to put it in the stove to speed up the temperature "fix" LOL

Jenny said...

Hello Matt, I am exactly in the same situation with David and Yana (at least I think so). The difference is that I have Toshiba Satellite M305-S4819.

I tried the 60 sec drain, power on and off...still plugged in sans battery, boots up to show Toshiba logo, then nothing. during the "boot up", the hard drive indicator flashes.

all other lights, i.e. capslock, multimedia, power, a/c are all on. dvd ejects ok.

did the following during the on/off phase:
1. hit f2, screens that need to come up came up.
2. hit f12, multiboot, had 3 options: hdd, cd/dvd, and another one i forgot...i hit enter on hdd on the first try, got the same blank screen. hit cd/dvd on the 2nd try, same result...

It's sitting there waiting for time to heal it's wounds...hopefully, i'll get something when i wake up.

Disclosure said...

David and Yana, The light flashes is your computer motherboard telling you something. Maybe look into the Sony Vaio manual or call Sony for interpretation. Let us know.

Jenny, if you can get it to boot from the cd/DVD, that would be worth a try. Do you have a disk you can boot from? If yes, a checkdisk would be in order.

Alex said...

Hi mentor matt, i'm having the same problem as Jenny and i do not not have a set-up disk. on my laptop it says to either use a disk (which i dont have) or call the hardware or software manufacturer so do recommend doing that or do u have any other suggestions? please contact me as soon as possible either with a comment or an email. my email address: technodog5@yahoo.com

Annoyances Resolved said...

Hi Alex, Besides calling the manufacturer, you could try the solution in the original post, above, or also try http://annoyances-resolved.blogspot.com/2009/09/vista-sleep-problem-laptop-not-waking.html

Anonymous said...

hey guys just wondering if anyone could help i have a similar issue with my toshiba satellite laptop.. its only about 13months old, just out of warrenty.
When i try to boot it up the HDD light flashes for a few seconds, then nothing. the power light stay
's on but black screen. I have tried to boot from a cd but no dice, when a cd is in the drive on start up all it seems to do is Flash the HDD light a lil longer then back to nothing, any help would be much appreciated. Im going insane.!
Thanks Az

Disclosure said...

Anonymous, Have you tried the advice in the original post? If yes, at what step are you now?

If the screen is showing nothing, try connecting an external monitor. Also, let us know if you changed anything recently, software, hardware or peripherals.

lorretta said...

I am trying to fix my nephews Dell laptop. I think it happened when he installed a web cam driver or software. A message appeared saying it was going to turn on some power saving option. About an hour later while using the internet the computer just turned off. When you press the power button all the lights turn on, no fan or hdd sound, then a few seconds later it turns off. Tried pressing power 60sec trick, using power adapter only, nothing works.

Disclosure said...

Loretta, So far it looks almost identical situation as in the original post. Try the same solution.

The other option, check http://annoyances-resolved.blogspot.com/2009/09/laptop-wont-boot-and-shows-blank-screen.html

Anonymous said...

I have the same problem, but when I press the power button, only the power and blutooth lights up, then a few seconds later the computer shuts down. I am not sure if this is a cpu, power or video card issue.

Disclosure said...

Anonymous, I see you have the same problem apparently. But did you try the same solution from the original post? Give more details then maybe someone can help.

Anonymous said...

Hi ,your help will be much appreciated.
My Toshiba Satelite laptop was giving regular issues hence I started using it in emergency on SAFE MODE. On normal mode, it use to hang-up at any point between the start-up to the desktop screen. Hence , after taking the HDD backup , I tried running the recovery CD's which I got alongwith the laptop , but during the course of running the CD ( pressing F12 in beginning, then slecting CD/DVD...)the system again gets invariably hang-up at any point. The processor light blinks for sometime and then its gets hang-up..ever since running the CD..now it shows a blank screen . I think it not be a HDD issue ( as what service centre people told me as I used my HDD on another machine .....)..Please Advise.

Anonymous said...

Hey there, i've been having some pretty big issues with my DV7. I do a bit of gaming on my laptop, i have a cooler for it, to prevent overheating. However, lately, it has been randomly shutting down without warning while playing games. So i downloaded a program to see the temperature it is running at. Generally it runs at about 80 Celsius which seems a bit high..Anyways, the big problem is; this morning i was playing and all the sudden it shut down. I then went to turn it back on, and it worked for a few seconds and shut down again. I then turned it back on and realized that the power button was flashing, and that was it. It then shut back down, and now when i press the power button, nothing happens. I've tried the process of removing the battery and power supply and holding down the power button - nothing. Please help me with this problem, my laptop is my life. Thanks ahead of time for replies

Anonymous said...

I have a dell vostro 1500, all of a sudden while using it the laptop switched off! when i press power button nothing happens no lights nothing, have taken out battery(which is full) and put it back in, same problem totally dead!! Charger makes a funny clicking nosie when I plug it in but it is working as a have tried it in another dell laptop and it works fine. Please please please can anyone help me???? need laptop badly as I have sections of my final year Thesis on the laptop (i know i should have backed it up.....)
PLEASE PLEASE pretty PLEASE any help?????

Gavin said...

Hi, I've been having this problem since October of last year and thought a new perspective might help things a little before ordering an eRecovery Disk from Acer and trying that. My laptop is an Acer Aspire 4520 that is out of warranty and last October after installation of a Windows Washer program my laptop would start up, but once it got passed the screen where you can push F2 the screen goes black and the word A disk read error occurred Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart. I've tried switching around the boot order and the F12 settings. I also tried eRecovery which would not work and the F8 safe mode which also would not work. I've tried the battery reboot and letting it heat up. Any other suggestions would be most appreciated. Thank you.

Unknown said...

Well, mine is scary but I think it is almost the same as you have described above. I have three types of computers in the laboratory. But only one type is experiencing this problem of not booting. The power enters and the switch on of the CPU keeps blinking as if it has low power. When you boot there is light in the key board but that is the end. Innocent Happy, Masindi District, Uganda.

Disclosure said...

Dear Anonymous,

Sorry for a late reply. Your issues seem to be some serious hardware problems.

Especially when you have a laptop overheating to 80 C, that is extremely hot. Normally, a hard disk should not overheat beyond 60 C I believe.

Hope that helps, Annoyances resolved

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
HS said...

Hey there

I am using TOSHIBA L500. Last night before I turned it off, every thing was working normally as usual. However, this morning when I pushed the Power bottom, it just does not work at all.

The power light, battery light and the cord light are all ON.
The disc light was OFF.
The keyborad does NOT work at all. Not even the caps lock and num lock.
I can hear the "fan" inside was working, because there is some wind blowing out of the laptop itself.
The screen has been BLANK all the time. Totally Dark. Not even a message of TOSHIBA showed up on my screen, it just does not work AT ALL.

I tried many things as people in the internet taught, such as "unconnecting the cord and battery, then press 60 secs and then start again balblabla" it doesnt work for me.
I pushed the keys such as FN plus other F1~12 and it does not help at all.

Now I have been waiting for almost one hour, its still the same...

Anyone knows what I can do now???
I bought this TOSHIBA in Taiwan, but I am now in the Netherlands, where service is always much slower and expensive even though my computer is still in its global warranty period.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
scarlet said...

i'm having the same problem as HS my every thing except the screen boots up and in the past this has happened to me for a good 3 month's and i just played around with opening my CD slot and unplugging/replugging and pressing on/off for an hr and it worked. But this time its not working for me I've been at it for 5hrs and it didn't work.

then i remembered i cleaned my fans out the day before this problem started this time, and the 1st time this happened i hadn't so my computer would heat up faster. what i tried this time is i put my laptop on my bedsheets tell it got hot and turned off then rebooted and it worked fine with my fans cleaned out. because i previously had working laptop but lasted like 30min-2hrs. my dad wanted to get rid of my laptop saying its dead now cause its at least a 3yr old laptop i use for gaming and its a dell laptop made for hd movies (weighs a ton).


sorry if this seems a bit jumbled and weird this my first blog post and i fixed the problem in the middle of my help request so i just changed it up a but :P hope this helps.

and if you need to contact me email me at soren288@yahoo.ca and make the title of email laptop wont boot other wise im probably just gonna delete it like the rest of my spam :P

Disclosure said...

HS, if your screen is blank, attach a second monitor to your laptop through the VGA port and let us know what you see now. Thanks for sharing!

scarlet, sounds like cleaning the fans can be quite dangerous! thanks for sharing!

Unknown said...

I have a Sony vaio laptop that starts fine but the video is all jacked up, looks like an 8 bit Nintendo and everything is super huge on the screen. I suspect its an issue with the video card being fried, but was hoping for an opinion or some advice. The major issue being that the video card is soldered to the mother board so if its fried I now have a paperweight.

Disclosure said...

Vincent, sure, but that is just one of the possiblities. Have you tried attaching a second monitor? Let us know what you decided to do?

Anonymous said...

I have a same kind of problem. My computer is Fujitsu siemens Pi 3540. It keeps rebooting it self. It stays 40sec on and then boot. And screen is staying black all this time. HDD keeps litle noise about 4sec at startup but then nothing. It started to doing this when i attached one "usb-extra fan", when i did that computer just died. Tried all these things what u told about, but nothing. Did that freaking fan something to motherboard or what a heck. Thanks for any advice. :)

Disclosure said...

Anonymous, 4o seconds is a long time. What did you see on the second monitor during that time?

Also, when you tried "all these things", how long did you try them?

Please provide more info.

Anonymous said...

I tried second monitor, and nothing, just black screen. Iv been trying that battery off, 30-60sec powerbutton etc. thing about 10 times. Kept power on about 1h, it booted on that time every 40sec. It does same thing everytime. Power on, fan starts, HDD makes noise about 5sec, usb-ports works fine, dvd-player seems working, but nothing on screen and after 40sec. it reboots and same thing over and over again. And this all started when i tried that "usb-extra fan".

Anonymous said...

and btw, when computer runs only by battery it wont reboot, it only shuts down.

Disclosure said...

Ok I see, so when you say "over ad over again", how long did you let it go like that all by itself?

Anonymous said...

one hour and more.

Disclosure said...

I see. Mine turned on after about 1/2 hour of this if memory serves me well. Since then, it has happened again but it never lasted for more than 10-15 min.

It would be interesting to see what happens with a new battery... I still saw no need to buy one ;) As long as this old battery lasts at least 5 min or so it is enough to bring the laptop down in case the cable gets disconnected or the mains fails.

Anonymous said...

i hav an Acer laptop. During shutting down it got hanged and i forced shut down through Power button. Now it MANY times (not everytime BUT MOSTLY) gets blank when i turn on. All lights just blinks once, fan starts for once but nothing after that. i tried system restore but there is some problem with that.

Chetan

Disclosure said...

Chetan, Did you try running chkdsk within the command prompt window on all your drives, especially the C: drive (chkdsk c:\)? When you power down the computer during a disk write operation, the data can get corrupted. Chances are you could still correct the data. Try it and let us know if your startup improves. Tupe chkdsk /? for help with the parameters.

Anonymous said...

Hi I'm hat wondering if you provide help on this matter.

Disclosure said...

Absolutely! Please explain your situation in great detail. See the original post above for the level of detail needed.

Anonymous said...

well i tried all the usuall methods like 60sec hold button and more but my acer aspire 5535 still wont work please help i need my video games D:

Disclosure said...

Anonymous, glad you tried the usual methods.

However, the method described in the original post is highly unusual. Did you try that? It is really simple!

Report back with details what happened after you tried the suggested solution in the original post above.

Then maybe we can help you get your games back on!

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

I have a dell inspiron My daughter was playing with it and it just turned off. I would like to know how to get this to work I have been playing with it for hours. The light comes on for 1 sec and then turns off I have no screen and no noise. It is only 4 and would like it to work. I dont want to throw it out I have tried every technique and it still wont turn on. Dell had it working but know the warrenty is gone they wont help without a credit card number can you help

Disclosure said...

Sure. Have you tried following the directions from the original post above?

Tell us exactly what you have done, what you have seen, what you have heard, step by step. Which light comes on, for instance?

If you see nothing on screen, you might also want to try attaching an external monitor.

Write back with more and maybe we can help.

Anonymous said...

I have the same problem as yours. and yeah, my laptop will only boot after heating up a few while. But is there any other solution to this problem? maybe something need to be replaced? I need long time about 6 hours to boot it. I'm afraid that my laptop will not boot at all one day T_T

Disclosure said...

Anonymous, no, not other solution. This solution has worked several times so far, for two years now.

I suspect there might be a battery (not the main battery) that went bad and is causing the strange behavior.

You are welcome to investigate further. Let us know how it went.

Follow this blog above to find out if someone else has come up with a solution.

Anonymous said...

Hi i have a Toshiba A305 laptop wont boot up and no signial

Disclosure said...

Anon, yeah, every other person visiting this blog has this problem ;) Tell us more details about what happened exactly and if we have a lot of info maybe we can help.

Anonymous said...

hey, I have the same problem. Before this, my laptop hp compaq presario CQ40 only boot after leave it blank about 1-2 hour. But now it doesn't work anymore! I have left it over a night and still it won't boot. I don't know what to do. I took out the battery, plug, press power button 60sec etc, still doesn't work. I had sent it the shop and ask the guy what could be the problem. He said that it might be due to VGA card or graphic card faulty (if I am not mistaken) but it will cost me about RM200! (maybe about 400 in dollars). He said that most hp laptop have this kind of problem due to high temperature. So,there's no way I will pay for that. Hope that you can help me...

Disclosure said...

Why don't you attach the second monitor through the VGA connector on your laptop and tell us back exactly what you saw (lights, screen etc) and what you heard (noises of what kind).

Anonymous said...

Second monitor? VGA connector??? Sorry, I don't know about this. (Just a newbie) yesterday, I tried to unscrew the back, checking whether there might be something wrong, reseated the card(don't know what card) but still didn't work. And since I'm so fed up with it, I turn it on again and let it blank. but this time I didn't put on my table as usual, I put on my bed, hoping that the temperature would rise higher and faster. And after two hours, voila! It boot by itself! I don't need to turn it off and on it back and it just boot as usual. Hm.. it seems that it need much higer temperature than the usual. But still, it drives me crazy.
One more thing, even though the windows start normally, the caps lock and scroll LED is still blinking. They blink about once in 3 seconds and in regular rhythm. I wonder why? About the sound, no beep or something like that, just regular fan sound i think. Anyway, is it ok to leave the computer on without shut it down over a night or two? because it is so difficult to boot, so I guess I want to let it turn on.

Disclosure said...

So far you are doing better than the repair service! Yes, keep your laptop on to stay out of trouble.

Your symptoms and solution is very similar to the problem in the original post.

I don't know what the blinking might mean. Maybe look into your manufacturer's manual for the meaning of the blinking.

Let us know if you have any other problems, and follow this blog so you can come back.

Anonymous said...

my acer turned on then the logo a min after it goes to the repair screen and 20 sec later ,,black ,,,i tried every ,,,thing the laptop is only 2 months old ,, could i have a virus

Disclosure said...

Anonymous, I understand what you are saying. Your symptoms are the same as mine in the original post.

I understand you have "tried everything"... (nobody can do that)... but,

Have you tried following the solution in the original post to the T?

How long (in minutes) have you waited?

What were the sounds? What lights came up besides the Acer logo?

When you provide more information then we can help you further.

Jessica said...

I have a Toshiba NB250 it was working perfectly fine yesterday I turned it off went to turn it on the next day and the screen had gone black I've tried turning it on off taking the battery out and plugging the power cable in pressing F12 and F8 and leaving it on for about 5 hours nothing at all it is on all the lights at the bottom are on you can here it come on as it makes the sound I have tried everything please help!!!!

Disclosure said...

Jessica, The next step would be to attach an external monitor to the laptop and reboot. Let us know exactly what you see there.

Formerly Frustrated said...

So after visiting many websites suggesting removing the battery, holding down the power button, running it only off the power cord, etc., etc., I happened upon this website and tried the technique to let it overheat. I powered up the computer with battery in but not plugged in with the power cord, let it sit in the recliner, and later when I checked it had shut itself down. Powered it back up and WOW the screen turned on and all was working again. Just want to thank you for writing up your solution and sharing it with others. It is very much appreciated. Thank you so much.

Disclosure said...

Formerly Frustrated, Glad you found the original post useful.

I wish more people would read it thoroughly to realize how simple the solution is... instead they go all out and spend so much $$$ on repairs...

My laptop is still working just fine after 2 years of this "fix".

Anonymous said...

I have an Acer Aspire and every time I press the on button it turns on as the blue light goes on however nothing comes up on the screen
please help.............

Disclosure said...

Well,... did you follow the steps laid out in this post? If so, where exactly does your problem start to differ?

'cause if it doesn't, your problem is solved, just like I solved mine.

Anonymous said...

My problem was semi-solved with what Formerly Frustrated said...the only thing is everytime my laptop turns off I have to drain the battery before it will go on...it also makes this annoying beeping sound whilst waiting on the power draining...I thought it was a memory problem, so I removed a film I had on it, to make more space, but that made no difference...anyone any suggestions please?

Disclosure said...

What do you mean laptop turns off? Does it turn off by itself? Or do you turn it off?

More details, please, so someone might be better able to help you Anonymous.

Anonymous said...

what if the laptop does'nt turn on? i mean it goes off after 5 seconds of turning on... can it be back to life by what u said, leaving it of for heating or something?...

Disclosure said...

Anon, only you can answer this question. So what happened exactly?

Alex said...

I've been experiencing similar problems. I have a Toshiba Satllite L675D-S7052 and as I turn my laptop on it works fine for about 5-10 minutes however after that time frame my screen goes black. Everything is still running perfectly as I hear nothing that's out of the norm however like I said my screen goes black and noticed that the "caps lock" key doesn't light up either.

I have drained all excess charge from my laptop and that did not work. I hooked up my laptop to an external monitor and it works fine up until my laptop gets the black screen then my external monitor goes blank as well. So, I'm drawing a blank at what else it could be.

Disclosure said...

The caps lock key and the screen going off at the same time sounds interesting. How old is your laptop? It may be due for some serious internal cleaning? Like taking it apart and vacuuming. Is there a lot of dust inside?

Unknown said...

So with my Acer Laptop, I turn it on, it starts up goes to the big acer logo with the options to press the f2 f12 buttons I tried every scraping thing all of it.. even the f8 but here a twist, I have it on the setting, Sata mode AHCI which is the default setting, but when I switch it to IDE mode it goes further in load the laptop to the point where I am able to access the f8 option, and the black screen passes. and I can even see the normal background for when one is about to log in.
My question is, how does this look from your standpoint?
I was listening to pandora one night and the next morning this?

Disclosure said...

So you are basically saying everything is fine when you switch to IDE mode?

Anonymous said...

remove power source and run from battery only

Shawn said...

Hi
I have a Toshiba laptop with sort of similar issues..

I closed the lid last night to move it for dinner, and upon trying to wake it up, discovered it dead. When u hit the power button, only the battery and power lights come on... No HDD. I tried all these suggestions, and tonight plan on taking the HDD out to see if I have a loose connection... Then the only other thing I didn't try is running it on battery until it dies.

Any other suggestions while I'm at it?

Thanks in advance.

Shawn

jordan said...

please help
I have a Packard bell easy note gn45 and same problems above.

I've tried everything said but nothing. the difference is:
1) windows starts booting then suddenly HDD light disappears and
2) it doesn't shut down suddenly. but...............
the boot up screen just hangs no use of keys on the keyboard. the only use is power button

stops loading at
crcdisk.sys

Anonymous said...

My dell laptop latitude d600 was working normal until I did a virus scan i forgot about it when i return to check it, it would not reboot.I WENT TO SETUP IT DOES NOT FINDS THE HARD DRIVE DID DIAGNOSTIC ALL IS GOOD EXCEPT FOR HARD DRIVE PUT IN RECOVERY DISC TO NO AVAIL SOMEONE OUT THERE HAS ANY SUGGESTIONS BESIDES GETTING A NEW DRIVE. i SO NEED TO RETRIEVE VERY IMPORTANT STUFF IN THIS HARD DRIVE. MR. IMPATIENT.

MattsyKun said...

Thank you all SO MUCH for the tips! I have a Toshiba Sattelite m645 that has issues starting up. As a result, I can't bring it anywhere with me! But I now know it's a temperature issue, as well as needing to clean it out of dust (and possible eraser shaving particles). Right now it's just sitting, I'm waiting for it to get to room temperature before I start it up and continue my graphic design work.

Anonymous said...

Hey, thank you so much. I have no idea how to express my appreciation to you. After whole day long trying with different method and finally came to your blog. First I think is that even possible and after that I just decide to give it a try. And yes, my laptop finally sparked up at last!!! I was like how even possible but the truth is it worked. Really thank God for found your blog and thank you so much for the help. Thank you

Unknown said...

i have a lenovo ideapad ,model no P580. it was previously installed with windows 8.it has UEFI boot sytem and the partion type of the hard drive was GPT. The system got crashed and i just didnt find any uefi boot disk. the laptops display was dead so that i had to connect the hard drive with a desktop.what i did was conveted the hard drive to mbr format using a windows 7 bootable disk (mbr format supported) and i installed the os succesfully.but the prolem is the laptops display still remains dark and i cannot see anything.is this has anything to do with the mother board type???? because my desktop has an old model mother board (intel DG41wv). i could not install the os using my laptop as the display was previously dead and i had some problems with my dvd writer.can anyone find me some solution please....:( :(

Anonymous said...

You are fucked!

Anonymous said...

Why is everybody posting problem here. Obviously nobody has posted a solution yet.

Anonymous said...

I have Asus k43sd. While i watching a movie the screen went all fozzy like a broken tv after that i turned it off pressing power button and removed battery power cables and for about 15minutes and putit back in and powered on and wallah it turned on but samething happend again after about 5miin but when i tried the samething removing batteries and all and powered it back processor was working fine but my laptop screen was all black plz help me

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