HP Pavilion DV5000 laptop won't turn on or off

[tintock]

This laptop is used every day and worked perfectly until this morning.

I attached the power cable and switched it on, but the screen remained blank. All the usual power lights along the top of the keyboard are illuminated, but that is all. The blue charging light along the front edge blinks.

When I try to power down by holding the on/off key down, nothing happens. The lights stay on and the computer doesn't switch off.

Bizarrely, when I disconnect the power cord, the lights switch off - but only then.

I have tried booting up from the DVD drive to no avail.

Any assistance would be much appreciated to get my laptop back up and running.

[Cloud_Strider]

I take it the screen is blank at all times.

If you connect it to an external monitor, is the external monitor blank. 

Do the caps/num lock keys blink at all?  If so, what is the pattern?  A patter is a series of blinks separated by a short pause. 

Perform a hard reset. 

1.  Disconnect anything connected to the notebook and remove the battery.

2.  Hold the power button for one minute.  This is important to this process.  Some users have commented using a clock on the phone to determine when a full minute has passed. 

3.  Reconnect the charger and insert the battery.

4.  Try turning the notebook on.

Let me know if the issue remains the same after a hard reset and if the external monitor, if one is available, is blank. 

[tintock]

Hi, Thanks for your reply.

The screen is blank at all times.

If I connect the laptop to an external monitor, the external monitor remains blank.

The Caps/Num Lock keys do not blink.

There was no change following a hard reset.

When the laptop is connected to the power cord and I press the on/off button, there is a very brief noise of a fan operating which quickly cuts off and the hard disk access light at the front of the laptop blinks 3 times.

Also, when I try to boot the laptop with a Knoppix/Linux DVD, the hard disk access light blinks 26 times and then nothing. The laptop remains inactive. When I eject the DVD, it is still spinning in the tray, so power is getting to the DVD drive.

[Cloud_Strider]

It sounds like the notebook is just powering off before making it to the POST tests.  This is generally a hardware failure, but I would like to take the hard reset one step further.

1.  Disconnect anything connected to the notebook and remove the battery.

2.  Remove the RAM modules.  Page 5-11 of this guide details how to do this. 

3.  Hold the power button for one minute.  This is important to this process.  Some users have commented using a clock on the phone to determine when a full minute has passed. 

4.  Reconnect the charger, insert the battery, and reinstall the RAM.

5.  Try turning the notebook on.

Let me know if this makes a difference. 

[tintock]

Thanks for your perseverence.

I disconnected anything connected to the laptop and removed the battery. I removed the RAM modules as directed and held the power button for one minute.  I reconnected the charger, inserted the battery, and reinstalled the RAM in that order. I turned the laptop on.

The only perceptible differences to the previous state were:

1. The blue charging light at the front of the computer remained steady, whereas it flashed before.

2. Disconnecting the power cord has no effect on the on/off switch light and the other lights along the top of the keyboard. Only removal of the battery causes the lights to extinguish.

[tintock · Accepted solution]

In the absence of any further advice or suggestions, I decided to try clearing the CMOS. In the process, I discovered that the RTC battery was dud, so I replaced it with a good battery and Hey Presto! - the computer is now back up and running as normal. Happy days!

[56Claes]

Hi! I found this blog via Google after having used other sites on the language of my homecountry  Sweden. The HP computer from -06 was recently used by my daughter because she beleived it to be easier to work on compared to her Mac Notebook. Before christmas last year my daughter said that it was q  impossible to start so I put it on my warderobe instead of trying to repair it. Yesterday I took it out again, because I thoutht I could use the computher in our summer-house 120 km away, so I begun to look at some tecnical forums to have the problem solved. When I found your blog I had mostly given up. I followed your last advice to change the small battery to the processor, and then it started as before! Woow or what you express it over there.

With the best regards from Claes in Sweden