Laptop Display Failure

[promtingle]

I recently purchased a refurbished HP Pavilion 17 laptop and was in the process of installing Norton Utilities 16.  The installation program reported a failure due to the need to update the chipset drivers.  After downloading a driver package from AMD that was supposed to fix the problem, installing it, and restarting, I checked the device manager section for IDE/ATAPI controllers to see if the update was successful.  It was not, and I decided to investigate the AMD website for options.  I found an AMD Radeon software package that was supposed to scan and update any drivers it found out of date.  As the software was completing it's installation, I noticed that the display went blank.  I didn't think much of it, considering that it may have been updating display drivers, but the display never came back on.  After a hard restart, the screen displayed the HP logo and I assumed it was ok.  Once the logo went away, the screen wouldn't display anything.  Did the AMD software wipe out my display drivers?  Has anyone else experienced this issue?

[HPlaptop513 · Accepted solution]

I had similar graphics problems with my HP laptop a few months ago. My laptop would boot up, display the HP logo with the loading symbol beneath, an then the screen would go blank and nothing would happen. The issues started after updating my drivers to the ones on AMD's website.

The solution: First, try to boot the laptop into windows safe mode. Windows safe mode allowed me to get into my laptop, and it should work for you. Then, open device manager and navigate to display adapters. Uninstall the display driver, and windows will ask you to reboot your device. Upon rebooting, windows should load normaly (not in safe mode), and you will notice that all the windows animations (such as opening the start menu) will be laggy. This is because your laptop is using the generic windows display drivers. If your computer is connected to the internet, it might install the proper video drivers by itself. If not, make sure and install the drivers on HP's website. Do not use the drivers from AMD's website! Now, your laptop should work as normal. Also, I just followed these steps on my own laptop and everything works fine, so it should work fine on yours.

I do not work for HP, nor am I associated with them in any way. I just remeber having this problem with my HP laptop a while back and I got so upset thinking it was ruined. I was able to fix mine, and hopefully you can too!

[promtingle]

I followed your instructions exactly and was able to restore the screen as you described.  Thank you very much for your help.  You are a lifesaver.  🙂