Ask Me Help Desk - What can cause a laptop quit working out of the blue?

I have a HP DV9000 it worked great this morning when my wife was using it, she went to a friends house and when she got back it didn't want to start. It will turn on, the lights will turn on, the cd drive will look if a cd is in, the fans will kick in, the screen comes on but there is nothing on the screen not even the bios. I hooked up a different monitor to it to see if the screen just broke. And still nothing. Any ideas?

Hard drive crash. Dropped or just a crash.

Try putting in a bootable CD or do the startup sequence to get into the BIOS (Probably F8 while booting.

Another possibility is the backlight failed. Look closely with a bright light in front of the screen. See if you can see a very faint image

Quote:

Originally Posted by vwboy18

Any ideas?

A popular issue with laptops is inadvertently hitting the key combination that changes the video output from the built-in display to an external connection. But, that issue has probably been eliminated since you've already tried an external display. So, any component issue that hangs POST can be a culprit as well as issues in the power supply. More unlikely things like damaged or debris filled external connectors or loose internal connections can also cause funky behavior. My routine for machines that appear dead is to first check power and connections, reseat memory modules, and then disconnect all peripheral drives and devices attempting to get the barest machine configuration working and then add stuff back until the problem is found.

Also to add to KISS's backlight possibility, visibility of any image present can be improved by holding a bright flashlight (LED works well) at a low angle to the plane of the screen near the edge of the screen or beside the area of the screen to illuminate better.

Another possibility is condensation or thermal effects on connections or components in bitter cold weather - for example if the laptop was left in a cold car for some time and then brought inside and not allowed to acclimate before it was turned on.

Sorry it took me so long to reply. Thanks for the comments. As far as KISS the bios won't even show and I tried using a flash light and no luck. But when I turn the computer on the screen still stays black but its not like a dead black, it kind of brightens up but acts like its not getting signal. Now for scleros, the computer does not go outside and it has been on a table in my living room for a while now, it gets kind of hot in there because of the fire place but I don't think it gets hot enough to hurt electronics. Now you said to reset the memory modules, but I have no clue how to do that. I can build a computer and install every thing and write a little bit of code, but as far as the hard circuits go I'm about clueless.

I can' find a good pic of your laptop, but one of the compartments on the bottom should contain a memory module. Take a look at step 5 here: How to upgrade memory in Toshiba Satellite M100/M105 laptop >> Inside my laptop

Note the memory door. My HP laptop has three compartments. Wireless, memory and hard drive and of course battery.

You have to remove the battery before starting. The 2 x 4 bay will likely be the disk drive.

You may have to remove a few screws to get to the compartment

In one of the step 4's, you'll see a semicircular notch and a row of gold fingers.

The notch has a small metal latch in it.

Make sure your not on a rug that generates static. Open the access cover. Push the latches away from the cutout and hold. Pivot the memory card along the fingers and it should come out.

It goes in the same way, at an angle. Keep trying to pust gently while moving the memory card flat. You don't have to hold the latches. Make sure it's locked into place.

Removing and installing is called reseating, however I would have expected beep codes with the laptop.