Getting data from HP Stream with a broken screen

[scotw75]

I have an HP Stream 14 that has a busted screen.  The laptop boots up and the screen lights up but doesn’t display anything.  Is there a way to get my pictures off of this laptop since it doesn’t have a hard drive I can take out?

[WAWood]

@scotw75 

Not easily ...  and perhaps, not at all.

You have two options that might work well enough to get to the "drive" and extract files -- adding an external monitor and booting from USB media.

You can follow the instructions below to create boot media and use that to start the laptop -- and if you can attach an external monitor and use that, utilize the file manager tool on the boot USB to find the files you need.  But if the external monitor does not display, then you are stuck.

What MIGHT work is the following:
1) On a working PC, use this link to download and install a free copy of Macrium Reflect: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Once that is installed, use the option to create a Boot USB stick (Other Tasks --> Create Rescue Media). This creates a bootable USB stick that runs a version of Windows.
3) Boot the PC from that USB stick. To do this, try pressing F9 repeatedly while booting to get a boot drive menu, or press the Esc key repeatedly while booting to get an HP utilities menu, and select the boot menu from that
4) Be patient ... as booting from a USB stick is really, really slow
5) Once in the MR recovery environment, you can then remove the USB stick.
6) Insert a USB stick for holding data and, down at the bottom left of the windows screen are some icons. Select the one on the right to open a form of File Explorer.
7) Use the File Explorer app to locate the files you need and copy them to the USB stick.

Good Luck