Older Laptop won't boot

[BubsMama]

I have an older laptop that was slow but working fine. One day out of the blue it stopped booting up. It will make a clicking sound from the cd drive and then the caps lock light starts blinking. I've tried doing the hit esc button but nothing. I'm not sure what to do now.

[WAWood]

@BubsMama 

If there is no CD in the drive, then the "clicking" sound you hear is almost certainly the sound of a failing hard drive.

To check the drive you have to follow these steps:
1) Press Esc key repeatedly, several times a second, while rebooting the laptop. Do NOT hold the key down, just press it over and over.
2) Eventually, you will see an HP Startup Menu -- that will look similar to the image below ...

3) press the Function key for testing the hard drive (usually F2) and let it run.

Please report back the test results.

[CherylG]

@BubsMama 

When you say "tried doing the hit esc button but nothing"  are you saying that it doesn't open a menu with F2, F10 and other options? Just nothing on screen? Are you tapping it immediately after powering on?

You might look through the blink code charts to see if your caps lock has a pattern that matches. Scroll down the page to see chart for older laptops.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01732674