Shows only black screen with mouse

[Izzy24]

Okay, so I’ve had this hunk of junk for about two years now and it’s been pretty buggy from the start.Not that I’m complaining or anything, but it’s always been a bit screwy. Anyway, so the setup here is this: I have an HP Envy 360 touch screen laptop and a few months after we got it, it was dropped and the screen cracked. It was fine for a while, still useable and stuff, and the screen still worked, but then after about 4 months the screen just... stopped. It went black and has stayed that way ever since. The keyboard still lights up, the fan still whirrs softly on the inside, the processing unit we knew was still good, but we couldn’t get the screen to turn on. But, I have this drawing monitor that hooks up to it and that’s what I’ve been using as a surrogate screen these last few months. It’s worked fairly okay save for how cumbersome the whole thing is, but this morning I had to pack everything up into a bag and go to my sisters house to house sit, because I still had online courses to do for college. I’ve done it before, mind you, and  it’s never been a problem until now, but as luck would have it, I get everything out, set up the monitors and computer and plug everything in, and the computer turns on and all I’m getting on my screen is black and the little mouse pointer thingy. I’ve tried restarting it, tried plugging in the charger, tried just waiting it out, tried unplugging and plugging in the monitor, tried pressing different keys.... nothing’s happened. I need to get these assignments finished pronto, and this is the only computer I have. Help, please!

[WAWood]

@Izzy24 

You have been extremely fortunate to date that, after it was dropped -- because in addition to screen damage, that can also damage any internal drive and leave hairline cracks in the tiny traces on the system board.  I think this last thing happened --m which is quite common -- and in these cases, it is only a matter of time until the laptop quits working.

I am somewhat surprised that, after this accident, knowing that it was damaged (and could fail at any time) you did not bother to start doing daily backups of critical files to a USB stick.  This is about $10 cost and about bout 10 minutes of work -- and had you done that, you would not NOW be in the state your are in.

What you need to focus on now is doing data recovery to get the files and folders you need off the drive.

All you will be able to recover at best from the drive is personal data. You will not be able to recover settings, website information (including user accounts and passwords) or applications.

Your best bet for recovering data now is to do the following:
1) Remove the disk drive from the old PC. If this is a SATA hard drive or a SATA SSD, this is a simple thing to do. If this is an m.2 SSD, that could be either screwed to the motherboard or soldered to the motherboard. If the second, you would need to have a techician remove it for you, or you risk seriously damaging the PC doing it yourself.
2) If you have a desktop PC with a spare hard drive connector, then connect the old drive to that. If the old drive is a SATA drive, connect both the power cable and the data cable. (This adapter is illustrated below) If the old drive is an m.2 SSD, you will need a USB-to-mSATA cable.

3) Try to retrieve the files and folders you want to save from the old drive and copy them to the new PC.

If this does not work, then you need to do the following:
1) Download and install this utility on a working PC http://www.majorgeeks.com/news/story/recover_data_in_3_steps_with_minitool_power_data_recovery_free_...
2) Run the data recovery utility to see what can be retrieved from the old drive.

If that tool does not find what you need, an alternative is Recuva http://www.piriform.com/recuva

And, if that does not work well, the best tool out there is this one, but only the demo version is free https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm