When I turn on my laptop it starts booting and then the screen goes blank
Hi, I seem to be having a strange problem with my Toshiba M35-S456 (Special Edition) laptop. I have had it for a little over a year with no problems at all. Yesterday I was using the laptop as usual and left it for about 15 minutes powered on. When I came back the screen was blank. There was no response from the mouse or keyboard so I tried rebooting by pressing down the power button. After rebooting I saw the “In touch with Toshiba” screen as usual and then the screen went blank again! This keeps repeating on rebooting and I cannot go any further. All my LEDs work fine, I can hear the fan running fine, the CD drive makes the usual sounds but the laptop does not go any further after the Toshiba screen. I have been using laptops and desktops for a few years now and never seen such a problem. Kindly advise on what the problem could be and if there is a solution. Thanks.
First of all, connect an external monitor to the VGA port on the laptop and restart the laptop. Check if you can get any video output on the external monitor. Try to use a combination of keys that allows switching between the internal and external video output. For most Toshiba laptops it would be Fn+F5. Press the keys a few times and see if you can switch the video output back to the internal screen.
It is possible that a failed hard drive prevents the laptop from booting normally. You can try to remove the hard drive and start the laptop. Check if you can pass “In touch with Toshiba” screen. If you can access the wireless card, I would try to remove it too. I’ve seen before that a failed wireless card causing a similar problem.
After you removed the hard drive, try to boot the laptop from any bootable CD (Windows 2000, Windows XP, Live Linux CD, etc.) to check if you can get the laptop to display any video.
If the laptop boots with video when the hard drive is removed, then most likely it is your problem. You can download Hitachi drive fitness test and test the drive.
Buy the way, can you boot into the Safe Mode at all? Try it by pressing F8 on start up and selecting the safe mode option.
February 13th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
My laptop did the same thing…. try turning it off. taking the battery out pressing the power button a few times and putting the battery back in. it is cause to a build up of static, when left on for periods of time
March 28th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
hi, I got the same boot up problem on my vaio c190P. It boots up to the VAIO logo screen and just freezes there. I tried reseating the memory, install a different hard drive, connect to an external monitor, but nothing worked. If I repeatedly tapping F2 key to access BIOS, the VAIO logo screen just blink to a black screen and freezes there. All indicator lights work fine it looks like it does read from the dvd drive.
February 19th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
hey my toshiba satellite a55 starts and then shows a screen that windows did not start successfully then gives me 5 options safe mode, safe mode with networking, safe mode with command prompt and last known good config…..and start windows normally…then when i choose an option it starts to the windows screen then shuts off and restarts….and it keeps doin that….help plzz!!
November 13th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
David Black,
Did you test the laptop with an external monitor? Do you see the same lines on the external screen?
I opened a new thread with your question, hopefully somebody can help you to narrow down the problem.
November 12th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
I have a Inspiron 9400/E1705 with a nvidia geforce go 7800, when i start the system (DELL logo) appears green vertical lines through all lcd display, when i tried to test the 3D the display die and then a blue screen say the hardware is something wrong and the driver, i’m not sure if the card is bad,because it works for a time and then failed , i tried to reinstall O.S.(windowsXP) and drivers and it works for a while and then fail so now i have uninstalled the nvidia driver when i started windows the diplay is good with no lines but poor resolution due to video card is uninstalled .
October 2nd, 2007 at 7:15 pm
hi there i have a inspiron 5100 i got and eror system memory has changed hit f1 continue or f2 to set up utilty ididnt change and ram for this to happen few days go i opened it up the cleaned it with rubbing acolcol b/c i had lots of dust in it after cleaning when i put everthing to geting i dont see anyting starting up i just see the power and the batt light on . dont know whati did wrong please help me with this problem my warenty is expired
please help me
August 10th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Hi guys,
I know this issue was discussed long time ago, but i got the same problem as Leroy’s. I quoted Leroy’s problem here,” ok specifically the laptop is having green vertical lines all over the booting process, some times the machine starts windows but besides the green lines the resolution and quality of the image is the lowest of the lowest I have ever seen. When I go to device manager the video card icon has the exclamation ” ! ” symbol on it. It could be a damage video card, if so is it integrated to the motherb.? If so Do I need to change the whole MB?”.
My laptop is DELL INSPIRON 9400 with NVIDIA Geforce 7800/7900 video card. I already called Dell, they thought it is probably my video card. First time, i thought that way, but i am confused now. Since i did research online, most the time, they said motherboard problem or memory. That makes sense for me because if the video card is broken, why i still can boot the laptop thru safe mode and can see everything on the screen after that?
I already connected my laptop to an external monitor, the green vertical lines showed up on the external screen also. I have no idea this is really video card, memory, hard drive or motherboard problem. So, my questions are:
1. Which part is the most possible broken in this issue?
2. Assume the video card, is NVidia Geforce integrated to the mother board for Dell Inspiron 9400, so i need to change the motherboard also even if the motherboard is not broken?
3. How to turn off the laptop monitor when i connect the laptop to the external monitor in the future?