ENVY 17 Black Screen

[dgplugge]

I have an ENVY 17 laptop that fails to boot.  The screen is black, although I hear the fan and disk drive.   No display action whatsoever -- no setup message, no logo.   I've attempted the following: 

- connected an external monitor to verify the monitor is not bad.

- reset each of the memory chips

- taken the striped drives out and tested them separately -- each good

- attempted the system reset by holding down the power button for 15 seconds

Nothing positive in all that.  It looks like the mother board might need replacing.  Can I do this?

Thanks,

dgp

[erico]

Your system reset does not quite have the effect as a hard reset.

Try a hard reset as follows:

1) Remove the battery and unplug the DC power adapter.
2) Press and hold the power button for more than fifteen seconds.
3) Plug in the DC power adapter (leave the battery out for now)
4) Press the power button

Please post your positive or negative results here in your thread.

Did you make make a Windows repair disk?

Best regards,

erico

[pepe999]

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@dgplugge wrote:

I have an ENVY 17 laptop that fails to boot.  The screen is black, although I hear the fan and disk drive.   No display action whatsoever -- no setup message, no logo.   I've attempted the following: 

- connected an external monitor to verify the monitor is not bad.

- reset each of the memory chips

- taken the striped drives out and tested them separately -- each good

- attempted the system reset by holding down the power button for 15 seconds

Nothing positive in all that.  It looks like the mother board might need replacing.  Can I do this?

Thanks,

dgp

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Hi,

Remove the hard drive and boot up the laptop. If you can get to the BIOS, the MBR on the hard drive is most likely damaged and prevents the POST finish the test.

The black screen means that some component in the system has failed and the POST can't carry on. I had the same issue with my hard drive but it could be any component like vga, memory modules, etc..

[dgplugge]

erico,

Pardon, but I did the hard reset you mentioned, not the soft reset. Nothing changed -- black screen.

dgp

[dgplugge]

Yes, I did remove the disks and attached them to another working system via USB. Being that the two disks are needed together (striped), I was only able to check that they were available. I did not attempt to boot the system without the disks, so I'll give that a try. I was thinking of booting from a USB thumb drive using Ultimate Boot.

[dgplugge]

If the disk drives are out and the Ultimate Boot USB shows no sign of life, I can image that it is the motherboard. I've eliminated the monitor using an external monitor. I've eliminated the chance of a bad memory chip by attempting to boot with only one. Of course, both chips may be bad. Is the replacement of the motherboard doable at home?

[pepe999 · Accepted solution]

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@dgplugge wrote:

If the disk drives are out and the Ultimate Boot USB shows no sign of life, I can image that it is the motherboard. I've eliminated the monitor using an external monitor. I've eliminated the chance of a bad memory chip by attempting to boot with only one. Of course, both chips may be bad. Is the replacement of the motherboard doable at home?

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Looks like something on the mtb (perhaps vga) is faulty. If the vga doesn't work any external monitor won't work anyway. My guess is a bad vga. The only thing you can do is to replace the mtb. How old is the lappy?

[astovlBMB]

same problem here:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Recovery/Black-Screen-No-BIOS/td-p/3288555

[Astrolabcix]

Do check that all of basic BIOS checks are connected...

In my case the RAM wasn't seated properly ... Why it should decide to unseat itself is a mystery - Possible oxidation of the ontacts ?? Who knows but reseating them was sufficient to get a working system !!