Laptop Display Problem.

[NLAlston]

Our daughter's laptop just stepped outside of the warranty that we had purchased for it, and now we are experiencing a problem with the unit.

A few days ago, our daughter went to turn the laptop on, and the screen refused to show any sign of life. All other indications of the unit receiving power are fine. You can hear the hard drive gearing up, and see all the little blue lamps illuminate. But there is only a very faint haze of light that will be washed across the screen. It is so faint, in fact, that you might not even take notice of it, unless you had your eyes on the screen before the power button was depressed.

I had thought that, maybe, the OS had somehow gotten corrupted, and that reinstalling it might turn everything around. But that was to no avail. Hopefully, someone will have an idea as to what might be going on here.

Advanced thanks.

 

[Kellie Dobbie]

I believe the laptop has a vga out (most laptops do). Try connecting an external monitor (crt or lcd whatever is available) and see if the problem remains. If it works fine with the external display, we can safely say the problem is with the laptop's lcd.

 

[lucasbytegenius]

There are also keyboard shortcuts that work on the BIOS level that may have been pressed by accident. These shortcuts change which display the laptop displays on, usually the settings are LCD, LCD/CRT, and CRT. Try finding those shortcuts (post good pics of the keyboard and we will help you) and see if it works after using them several times.

 

[The_Other_One]

As others suggested, try plugging it into an external monitor first. most of the time you'll get something, though I have seen some that refuse to go to VGA

Unless you see the POST/Splash screen then nothing, I seriously doubt it's software related.

Is there any activity to be seen? Does the HD light start to blink? Do you ever hear the startup sound? Do keyboard lights (caps/num lock) work?

 

[NLAlston]

I believe the laptop has a vga out (most laptops do). Try connecting an external monitor (crt or lcd whatever is available) and see if the problem remains. If it works fine with the external display, we can safely say the problem is with the laptop's lcd.

Kellie.

I did as you had suggested, and connected an external LCD monitor to the laptop (which, by the way, is an HP Pavilion DV9335NR/Core2 DUO T5300). I got real hopeful, initially, as I saw the screen begin to come to life. But the photos I took should be large enough (I hope) for you to see what ultimately came about. I don't know what that error message really means, but I am beginning to feel that it certainly isn't a mild issue.

PS: I just checked the post, after submitting it, to see if the photos did indeed come out large enough. I am sorry that they turned out as large as they did. I used Photoshop to shave the file sizes down, but this program doesn't have a 'KB' choice, and I didn't know what that would be converted to.

 

[NLAlston]

Is there any activity to be seen? Does the HD light start to blink? Do you ever hear the startup sound? Do keyboard lights (caps/num lock) work?

No activity. But I do get the startup sound (although there seems to be two clicks sounding, right behind that), as well as visuals of all the other lights working.