HP Pavilion 15-bn070wm wont boot (white lines after HP Logo)

[jrj2211]

Hello, one of my coworkers asked me to look at their HP Pavilion 15-bn070wm and its really stumping me. He says that windows did the April update and now the computer fails to boot into windows. What happens is these static white lines come across the screen after the HP logo:

My first thought was that the ribbon cable for the screen was damaged, but the HP logo shows up and I can enter the BIOS just fine. Trying to boot to Windows on the harddrive resulted in this screen, so I then tried to do a fresh install of windows. After making a bootable USB stick, I plugged it in and set it as the priority boot option. After the HP logo, the same thing happens! I also let it sit just to see what it would do, and it eventually restarts itself after about 30 seconds. I let it reboot 3 times, and then the windows repair tool starts initalizing (Says it on the HP logo screen). Once its finished loading, again the screen goes into these white static lines.

It seems that anytime it tries to boot into a windows enviroment, I get the same video result whether its on the disk, USB or disk repair tool. It also will not boot into safe mode.

I made sure the USB stick works by booting to it on my desktop. I might not have the full story but he told me this all happened after windows tried to update. I've tried to google it but "white static lines" hasnt come up with much.

I did also pop the drive out and did a "clean" using disk part on my desktop. This didnt help at all either. Also I set the bios to Legacy mode for USB which disabled secure boot but that didnt help either. That just made it constantly reboot immediately after the HP logo. Same thing happens if I reset to the default BIOS settings.

I'm pretty stumped on this one. I normally just recommend wiping harddrives when people ask me to fix their stuff, but its not working on this case.  I'm guessing it has something to do with the graphics driver for Windows. Does windows store that someplace other than the harddrive that it could cause an issue in different enviorments (harddrive vs USB)?

I also ran a disk check from the bios and you can see that the bios runs just fine:

[AKbush]

When was the last backup?

Can you get windows to run in command mode? The GUI  could have gotten messed up. often F10 can give boot options.

What of repeatedly hitting the escape key while the computer is booting? This lets you get to a HP diagnostics menu.

Windows10 lets you reinstall windows and "keep" your data.
It will probably delete all your programs because it gives you a new clean registry. If you have lots of software this could be lots of work.
Also getting all the Windows10 updates uses several Gb of bandwidth.

[iomare]

Hi,

If you attach to an external TV/monitor is the image the same?

You could try booting into a live Linux Distro such as Linux Mint to exclude a Windows problem.

It could still be a hardware problem.

Let me know,

David

[jrj2211]

@AKBush I wiped the harddrive already so the chance of losing data is not a problem. I have gotten into the bios but I dont see any options to boot into windows command line. The bios doesn't have many options or information.

@lomare I actually tried booting into a live linux USB stick and the same thing happens. Weirdly enough the grub menu comes up which asks me if I want to try or install ubuntu. If I click try, the white lines appear. So it seems like anytime it tries to actually load into a real OS the video driver just doesnt work. Do you know if bios doesnt use the integrated graphics chip to render the menus? I'm guessing it doesnt, so once an OS starts to boot and tries to switch over to actually using the graphics processor I get that weird video output. I'm guessing the graphics chip is toast and theres no point in trying to repair it considering the CPU is solddered to the motherboard and this things only worth maybe 150 bucks in working condition.

[iomare]

You could run a complete system test and see if it gives any errors.

Look in doc below at running system tests>

    Opening the System Tests menu when Windows won't start>

          Perform the extensive test

I am thinking the same as you, that it could be the video card.

Let me know,

David

[jrj2211]

I dont see any system tests from the diagnostics screen. When I go into that I only have the option for Memory and Harddrive tests. Under harddrive theres an "Extensive test" option but im guessing that doesnt check any other hardware. Weirdly enough, if I try to run the memory test, the white static lines issue comes up again.

[iomare]

On this page you can download the HP diagnostics key to create a bootable hard drive.

However, since none of the drives so far have worked, I have my doubts.

I would also give a shot at replacing memory since I have some lying around.