When I press the laptop power button, it acts like it starts, but nothing is on the screen. On rare occasions it will start with video and freeze up right away.
I received a Compaq laptop a few months ago and it was working fine, but there is a design flaw in my opinion that I did not realize until it was too late. If you plug something into the USB port you are not able to have the power adapter plugged in as well. It was too late and I had to bring the laptop into a local shop and they re-soldered a new ac jack onto the motherboard. Well I went to plug a few days later and it was not there, so I brought it back and they replaced it (for half cost) and I think the reason they did that is because they damaged something else. After I got it back again it started blue screening and shutting down before you could read the message. This happened to my wife most of the time as she used it most often. I was on it and it starting doing the same thing to me as well. I thought it may be a windows issue because the only time it did it to me was when I was surfing the net. Well it got progressively worse over the next day so I tried to do a clean install of windows. The dang thing kept freezing up during the installation process. I kept rebooting it and now it will not even come on the way it should. Most of the time when I press the power button, it acts like it starts, but nothing is on the screen. It sounds like it is trying to read the CD-Rom drive and the hard drive, but nothing is showing up on the LCD screen. On rare occasions it will show up on the screen, but it freezes when it tells you to press f2 to access setup. Sometimes it will let me get into setup, but it is VERY rare to get that far. I do not think the laptop is even getting to the POST. Please help me if you can think of what may be causing this problem. Personally, I think it acts like the motherboard was not grounded properly when it was reinstalled into the case because I had a similar situation with a desktop computer I worked on a while back ago.
Yep, it’s very sad when you pay for repair and get your laptop back with another problem. I cannot say if they did something wrong during assembly/disassembly process but it’s possible. Try to eliminate simple stuff, that you can do yourself without taking entire laptop apart. Unfortunately, you do not have a lot of options. First, I would remove the hard drive and try to start the laptop without it. Then, I would reseat memory or move it from one slot to another. That’s would be nice if you find a spare memory module and install it for a while instead of the original module. Remove any other devices that you can access from outside and try to start the laptop without them. That’s it. On the next step you’ll have to open the laptop case and try to reseat all connectors, but it’s more advanced. Finally, I would remove the system board from the base and would try to start it with an external monitor outside the laptop base. If it’s still locks up and freezes up, then most likely the system board is damaged.
I hope that somebody else can post a better solution here.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:55 am
Hi. Thanks for any help first and foremost. I have a Voodoo M515 laptop, about 1 year old. Just recently, it stopped booting up all together. I turn the power on, the fans engage and a few indicator lights come on. It is not even attempting to boot up. I have tried an external monitor. I called their tech support and they suggested it may have been the motherboard going bad. I replaced the motherboard and nothing was resolved, so I sent that board back. What is strange is that even when the power is ‘on,’ I am unable to even open the DVD/CD drive. I tried taking out …
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December 5th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Hey, this site is amazing… nice to know people like you exist! So here’s the problem I’m having with my IBM T41 laptop:
First, I notice that the screen started vibrating/blinking. Then all of a sudden the entire screen froze up. I turned off the laptop, and when I tried to turn it back on the power lights lit up but the screen was off! I tried this several times. One time the screen came up with a faint windows xp sign and then it froze.
I then took out the battery from the back, put it back in and tried it again. This time the screen came up, I logged in and tried to run Ad-awares.
Everything was going fine and then out of nowhere… BAM! The screen is out again.
I to get the laptop to turn fully on again with the screen by taking out the battery pack and turning it on again. This worked a couple of times but in the end the screen always ends up turning off at some point even though the power light is still on.
I noticed that the only time the screen actually turns on is when the battery is not plugged into it.
What could be the problem and how do you think I should go about fixing it?
December 5th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
The screen is not coming up AT ALL anymore, and I notice that the fan is working extra hard and blowing out more air than usual.
Thanks again!
December 18th, 2006 at 9:39 am
Hi. I have a 3 years old NEC Versa M320. A few weeks ago, it just went blank. What happened is that when I press the power on button, I can hear the fan turns and the LED indicator shows the power on lights up, the notebook tries to read the external drive (CD or floppy drive) and the hard drive indicator blinking a few times
then it stops, leaving the power on LED light and the external drive reading light on. The screen is blank all the time. I can’t even see the setup menu which usually pop up first. I do not know to diassemble this notebook as I do not have the any idea.I have tried removing all the screws but it still won’t dissambled.
My hunch is that the problem is related to the BIOS
chip that kept all the default info. Could it be due to
a dead BIOS battery? Even though the external drive LED indicator is on, there is no light indicating a reading at the CDRW drive or the floppy drive.
December 19th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
Kwng,
Can you access the memory slots? Are they located on the bottom of the laptop? You might have a bad or loose RAM module. Try moving it from one slot to another, make sure it’s seated properly and contacts on the memory module are clean. That’s would be nice if you can find another memory module and test if it makes any difference. That’s the first thing I would try to do in order to troubleshoot the laptop.
December 25th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Toshiba Tecra S1.
Several days ago, I noticed lines suddenly running horizontally across the screen, then disappearing after a few moments. The laptop froze at the time, and resumed normal operation at the same time the lines disappeared.
Since then, this Toshiba has done the same thing three more times. The last time, it booted correctly, logged on to Windows, and I was running Media Player for about three minutes when the same problem happened. The computer would not un-freeze. I turned it off, waited, and turned it back on, only to get a black screen. I waited overnight and re-booted the next morning. I got the “Windows was not properly shut down” screen, and chose “last known good config.”
It acted like it was about to start Windows, but froze instead. It beeps six times now when powered on (2 short, 1 long; 3 short). I have removed and reinstalled the battery, HDD, DVDROM, and both memory sticks. The screen stays black, no HDD activity, but power is on. It will occasionally allow me to reach the options screen to go into the BIOS and boot from CD, but I don’t know how to do any of that.
In summary:
Display stays black, but LCD does work.
Freezes at boot/ will not boot.
I’d greatly appreciate your help. Thanks in advance!
-Robert
December 29th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
I’m had the exact same problem with my laptop. I received it on Dec 11 and it was working fine. On Dec 12 I upgraded the RAM, and boom…it would start up (or sound like it was) but the screen would do nothing. It ended up being the RAM, and I changed it…all was better. Hopefully it is the same for you, otherwise I would assume it’s the screen. Try hooking the laptop up to a seperate screen to see if anything happens.
January 9th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
I took my toshiba laptop apart last week because it would not boot up, no hard drive activity, I put it back together and it worked fine. Now about a week later it won’t boot again. I bought a new hard drive because I wanted to upgrade it, but before I could set it up and transfer the contens to new drive I had this problem. I tried to put in the new hard drive but it won’t boot either. what should I do?
January 10th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Robert,
Are you getting any video when you turning the laptop on? Will you get video if you start the laptop without the hard drive installed? May be it’s not your problem?
Try reseating RAM. It’s possible that your problem has nothing to do with the hard drive and you have a faulty RAM or faulty connection somewhere inside.
You can try this. Start taking the laptop apart piece by piece and test it after each removed module. Minimize it as much as you can, until you have only three main parts left: motherboard, CPU (with the cooling module) and RAM. You need only these three main parts to successfully start the laptop with video. If you still cannot start the laptop even after you minimized it, one of the three main parts is bad. If the laptop start fine, start assembling it back and test after each installed part.
January 12th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Alright I am having a very similar problem with this laptop I am working on for a friend. she had a bunch of adware and spyware and had a trojan and some how she messed it all up so I was getting most of the stuff off used malware remover and removed the viruses and all that I did not have time to remove the adware and spyware I had to reboot when I uninstalled a bogus program in the program list and after that it wont reboot anymore. I have got it to boot a couple of times but It very rarely does that. it got really hot the last time I got it to boot and it had to be shut off. now u can hear all of the fans start up so it is trying to cool but it got really hot. well anyways I have not been able to get it to reboot ever since then. I don’t even get the initial compaq loading screen. I just get indicator lights and it sounds like it is trying to boot. the cd drive will open so it is getting good power and everything I don’t know if maybe it fried when it got to hot or iv there is something else I can try I just want to get it to boot to back up like pictures and other personal info that is on there. Maybe if I try to use the reset button on the bottom or something but I don’t want to mess it up anymore. if anyone has any suggestions then I would greatly apreciate it. thanks
January 30th, 2007 at 6:02 am
Aspire 5102WLMI screen fails to switch on, on first boot.
When I switch on my laptop everything appears to be fine all the correct lights are on and all the correct noises but the screen fails to show anything.
Sometimes after awhile it’ll go grey with lines on it but that hasn’t happened for me to take a picture of it.
Now to get on my laptop all I have to do is hold don the power button to switch off and then switch on again and my Laptop runs perfect as it should.
Boots up fine
Has to CHDSK for errors as I forced it to switch off.
I’m on my laptop right now typing this and it’s perfectly ok. It’s a new laptop and I hope it’s a simple fix. I’ve already updated the graphics driver but it didn’t help.
Interestingly sometimes it boots ok first time like when I tried to take pictures the other night
February 1st, 2007 at 6:39 pm
James,
It’s hard to tell what is wrong at this point, but I think it might be a hardware related issue. You’ll have to test the laptop with an external monitor. Connect the monitor to the laptop via VGA port on the back and check out the external video output.
If video on the external monitor fails the same way as on the internal screen, probably there is something wrong with the video card. Most likely the video card is integrated into the system board and in this case it would be necessary replacing the entire board.
If video fails only on the internal screen but external monitor displays it properly, then there’s something wrong with the LCD screen or video harness.
It’s possible that the video cable connection is loose and needs to be reseated.
Make sure the latest version of BIOS is installed and upgrade it if needed.
If the laptop is still under warranty send it in for repair. I don’t think it’s a software related issue.
February 3rd, 2007 at 9:00 am
i have a fabulous ibm thinkpad thank is giving me a headache. there are cases were its boots justs fine and then freezes when i get the desktop. four moths ago when that started, it gave me a message just after failing that the problems was caused by a device driver ATI2DVAG, so i had to download the latest display AND RUN it. The problem sought of changed and then started again. These days it may just boot and and freeze. i turn the power on then the screen wont light up. The fan whirms, indicating that it is running at very high speed. Help me out before I get tired of this technology.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
I have a similar problem. I have a DEll Insperion 1150 laptop and just the other day I was saving some info on a external hard drive thru usb and about 10-15 min. after I finished I shut down the drive and have problems ever since with laptop. I realized that the drive was still running at the time. Now my laptop won’t boot up. I tried a restore point and that didn’t work. Then it would boot up and then shut down and reboot once or twice. When I tried to do anything I got the blue screen error. This happened 4 times. I also tried safe mode and got a list of items that I didn’t know what it was. Tried preveuosly configured setting that work last. And now it won’t even turn on. Just get the power light with a faint hd light,but nothing. When I tried just the battery, the battery light would flash and again nothing.I am no lost at what to try next. Any suggestions.
February 17th, 2007 at 3:57 am
Laptop Freak,
I connected my laptop up to my Desktops monitor and it worked first time.
It is under warranty and it will be getting sent away to get fixed. They informed me if it is a software problem I will be charged.
July 17th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Hello friends,
Hi have a Dell Inspiron 600M laptop bought a year back, so far it is working fine. But now days, I am facing problem during starting. When I am switching on the PC the power LED is getting ON. but afterwards nothing is happening i.e. it looks like a idle PC for next 5 to 10 min then the BIOS display, hard drive led glows, PC starts booting normally. This problem comes only when I am staring the laptop after few hours (~10 hrs) from the last session. I have checked my RAM, Hard drive, Battery and charger those are working well.
So please give us your technical support to sort out the problem.
I have few doubts.
If the BIOS battery is dry then will it affect the system booting?
If the CPU FAN is not working will it hold the system booting?
November 17th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
hi Guys
I have Toshiba G15- AV501, it is showing me a Blank Screen when i press the power button, it does even show Qosmio label as it use to do it earlier. it happened when my Anti spyware detected a Trojan Virus & i tried to clean it up with Spy doctor & it gave blue screen of Death & Started this problem.
after that i have tried botting so many times but all in vain
please help !!!
Gaurav
November 18th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Gaurav,
Can you see the Qosmio logo on startup or the screen is always blank? If the laptop starts with the Qosmio logo but after that you get a black screen, it’s possible you have some kind of software related problem. In this case you can try fixing the problem by reimaging the hard drive – reinstalling factory software from the recovery disc.
January 14th, 2008 at 10:15 am
your mother board is toast you have to call toshiba..let them know you are aware of the free upgrade .. they wont offer this unless you mention it (pricks) they will send you out a shipping box .. two weeks later you get your lap top back with a new mb and graphics driver nvidia 6800 but your media control buttons wont work anymore !!
any one know how to fix this issue?? I am not sending my lap top out again
peace
January 16th, 2008 at 6:11 am
Acer Aspire 5102WMLi notebook had power failure during BIOS upgrading. Now it can show anything on screen. Does not seem to boot anyway apart from indicating power light when switched on. I suspect the BIOS is messed up but I don’t know what to do to reload the BIOS. Thanking you in advance for your help.
March 16th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I opened my Toshiba Qosmio E15 to replace the cooling fan and the left speaker. When I reassembled the laptop the fan would not spin and the LCD screen is blank. Also no indicator light reflecting that the hard drive is in operation. I am however seeing the power indicator light and the battery is charging OK but all else is dead. Is there any hope for this laptop or do I need to begin to save for a new one. Thank you.
March 16th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Joseph King,
You’ll have to check if all cables are connected properly.
Will it react at all when you press on the power button? If not, make sure the power button board (if you have any) is properly connected to the motherboard. Reseat the cable.
Make sure the memory module is properly connected to the motherboard, reseat the memory.
March 24th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I researched and couldn’t find anything close. I have a Toshiba Satellite A105-S101 laptop. 1 and 1/2 year old. Intel Celeron M380 1.6 ghz. 512 mb DDR 2 533 SDRam. Video ATI Radeon Xpress 200M with shared video 128mb. 60 gig HD. cd-DVD writer. Realtek ALC 861 sound card. Windows XP Home. Wireless G card. (we run it on wireless)
Has been running fine. While on Yahoo screen went fuzzy then computer died. Computer has AC light and battery charge light. When booting it will get num lock light, HD light, CD tries to test, F10 and F11 light and fan runs. It will try to start for 8 seconds and turn off. It will do this 6 times then shuts down altogether. Nothing on screen at any time. No beep codes. Can’t get into BIOS.
Tried normal stuff like removing RAM and inserting 1 at a time in different slots (2-256mb modules) Removed battery for just AC power. Tried just battery. Tried starting without battery, RAM, HDD, DVD module, modem and NIC card. have no spare parts to swap out. The HD is SATA so I can’t check it in another computer.
I can’t afford to take it in so any help and ideas would help. It’s my wifes computer and all she does is use email and play euchre. I know I can check the MB barebones but, is the video card separate or part of MB. I REALLY don’t want to strip it down more unless I have to.
April 5th, 2008 at 8:41 am
hi i have a very similar problem,
a couple of months ago my laptop(windows vista) froze and came up with loads of lines and i had to shut it down holding the hibernate button then i waited a few minutes and turned it back on then it was fine but it has done it a lot since then, whenever i am watching a dvd or on windows media player for longer than half an hour but i just shut it down then turn it on again and it would be fine then two days ago i turned it on and it started to load then it suddenly shut down so i waited a while and turned it back on and all the lights came on and the cd drive made a noise but the screen stayed blank and then it shut down and restarted and it kept doing this so i left it until this morning and turned it on again and it did the same thing, i have taken the laptop apart but i don’t know where the problem could be. could someone please help me?
summary:
lines streaked down the screen for a month or so
laptop turns on but nothing happens on the screen it stays completely blank and does nothing.
it seems like it is working apart from the screen and it restarts over and over again but nothing happens.
June 21st, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Hi I have a similar problem.
My Dell Latitude D500 laptop that works perfectly fine doesn’t work anymore after I putted out the battery for a few seconds and put it back. After putting back the battery I pressed the power on button to boot it up but it doesn’t boot up. The power signals comes on but the hard disk drive and the CD-ROM drive doesn’t read and then the power signals goes off again after few seconds. Any Help please?
October 7th, 2008 at 5:37 am
Similar problem occured for my China manufactured brand named “Prestigio”. It performance superb (compare to its price” but after a year, it can be PowerOn, with a blue light lit, some activity indicator on the right corner, the power for DVDMulti works as I can put in and take out DVD and the DVD is spinning.
However, the LCD screen with no activity, not even lit… no activity at all on the hard drive. So eager me, I started to open its casing and trying laptop basic troubleshooting steps on processor, mobo and RAM.
Well after that trouble, for this brand, its either processor or mobo and not the RAM.
A day after that, I call Prestigio service agent and he confidently claimed that its a mobo problem and should I choose to send to them, it will take about 2 weeks (as he claimed that he has to get it from their Taiwan counterpart) to replace its mobo with half of the price of its brand new one.
The price for mobo is about 3/4 of a current selling brand new Acer Aspire One 8.9″ 120GB HD 1GB RAM, built-in wireless, webcam and etc.
So after deep consideration, for laptop, instead of repair it, why not save and add some cash and get a new one with at least another 1 year warranty?
I can’t wait for a person or manufacturer who will make a laptop ultimate design where we can choose and fix its part on our own. In other saying, we can DIY it to follow our requirement, taste and style following the way how we can DIY our desktop.
Well, Sun technology has come up with its prototype of its Virtual machine with an extremely reducing in size to a ATX casing only compared to the current space of 20′ X 10′ room to place it all. If the song titled “Video killed a radio star”, in future scenario, it will be “Virtual killed all the STAR”…
Well, just stay cheerful as we probably be in horizontal position by the time its commercially launch….. so lets work on DIY laptop at out time.
April 12th, 2009 at 8:41 am
hi,just b4 2 weeks ago my toshiba laptop screen broken ,it was working properly even its broken just that i saw some lines but suddenly when i uninstalled its toshiba virtual sound i cant see anythings in screen i have to hold power button for on and off but even its on i just can hear only booting sounds can you help me whats the problem is ?