Laptop screen blank when switched on [Solved/Closed]

I had the same problem with my HP DV6599. On power on the screen would stay black, no POST, nothing at all on the display. The HDD would spin up but the HDD indicator would not come on and would not boot. The DVD drive would spin up and attempt to read a disc if one was in the tray but still would not boot. I found an answer on another forum. Unplug the power, remove the battery and then hold the power button for 30 to 60 seconds. Then reattach the power and attempt a boot. It worked for me! Just shutdown, put the battery back in you're good to go. Worked for me so definitely worth a try.

Just to update everybody on my diagnose:

So there are many problems which will cause issues of the screen.

1. Software
- Try Fn + F5 or something like that

2. Electrical
- Remove battery, unplug power, hold power button for 60 seconds, turn on computer with power plug only, then shutdown, add battery and restart

3. Magnetic On/Off Switch to detect of Close/Open Lid
- Your magnet switch is fubar some how. Open up the speaker cover and see if your lid actuator switch that come in contact with the magnet on your lid cover is stuck or not (find where the magnet is in the back of the front lid cover, trace where the magnet area actually touches the base of the computer and you will find the switch)
- Workaround, start windows with lid at 30 degree angle

4. Hardware
- You need to replace either Inverter, Blacklight, or everything. =)

Good luck and have fun!!!

try this if its a laptop.... unplug the power to the pc then take out the battery, then hold the start button on ur laptop for 20-30 seconds,,,once thats done, continue with installing the battery again and power lead.. then simply press start on ur laptop, an voila!!!! this should work, worked on mine!!!! hope this helps u too...

baldi68

I'm glad this fix has worked for so many people. I've had to use this fix again since posting.

Just to be clear this is not a fix for screen problems, this is a fix for a problem that prevents the laptop from booting at all. The laptop would not even attempt a POST and so would not even get as far as trying to output anything to the display.

I'm no expert but just wanted to share a fix that worked for me. For me it was a problem with the laptop not coming out of hibernation properly and completely freezing, the only option was to power off. On reboot nothing would happen, the screen would not even be initialised so it is nothing to do with the screen.

I can only theorise what the problem may be. As the solution is to remove the power lead, remove the battery and hold down the power button it would seem to be an issue with the laptop retaining some residual charge which is preventing the laptop from booting. I've heard of other poeple who have managed to fix this by simply letting the battery run out and then leave it overnight, this will again dissipate any residual charge but is just a much slower way of doing it. Holding the power button down with no power sources attached will dissipate this charge and allow the laptop to boot when a power source is reattached.

Unfortunately if the laptop boots and the screen is blank then it is a different issue, if the image on the screen is faint it is most likely a problem with the backlight and in these instances this fix will not work. Before posting this I thought this was an isolated incident but there have been so many replies it would appear to be a more common issue than I thought and works on many different models, not just the DV6599 that I've tried it on.

Thanks for all the postitive comments and I'm glad this has saved so many people a lot of money in unecessary repairs!

My husbands laptop randomly decided to go into "sleep" mode. He had selected sleep, shut the top, walked away and went to bed. Next morning he opens it and it does its wonderful mind-boggling complication of not wanting to have anything but a black screen, not a powered on black screen, just nothing... Yet, the system was trying to run anyway. ~confuzzled~
So, I do a google search and this is the first place I come across. Nanor, your advice is fantastic. I have no idea how you managed to figure out the hokey-pokey-dance to get this trick, but thank you for the time invested in doing so.
I tried the original: Remove battery, hold power button, plug in power cord, reboot,... still had the black screen", so I scrolled down and read a few more posts. So I redid the song and dance back up to the reinsert the power cord and turn it on, but instead of opening the lid all the way, I opened it just far enough to reach the power button, this did the trick; the screen lit up! and the boot process was clearly visual again! ..."continued to do a proper "shut down", reinsert battery, etc etc. powered up again and everything was just peachy!

Thank you.

i have a HP pavillion dv2000 and i experienced the same problem, then i searched for the answer to this strange situation and found that this works like MAGIC! :

1. UNPLUG THE POWER
2. REMOVE BATTERY
3. HOLD POWER BUTTON FOR 30/60 SECONDS
4. REATTACH POWER AND START THE LAPTOP
5. SHUT BACK DOWN
6. PUT IN THE BATTERY
7. THATS IT

honestly, it works like a charm
thank you so much!
love Zoey :) xx

thankx this helped a lot :)

The unplugging/replugging battery trick works for my HP Pavillion dv9500....but what is it exactly doing? Why does it work? Is this a permanent fix to the problem?

Will an external monitor work?

Thank you, works for me: HP Pavillion dv9300us.

Thank you soooo much for your advice. I had the same "Black Screen" problem. Last night I was using my laptop just as usual.... no problems whatsoever. I finished my project, closed the lid of the laptop (didn't shut down or put it to "sleep") and went to bed at 11:30pm. I woke up at 5:00am to continue my project, opened the lid of the laptop and my screen was black - and stayed that way. It was kind of like "the lights are OFF but someone WAS home". All the sound was working, I could hear everything running like usual yet no screen at all. Yes, PANIC!! I did a Google search and I stumbled upon this site and read all of the posts. Finding this string of posts was a true blessing! I tried the fix suggested (unplugged the power, took the battery out, held the power button for 60 seconds - said a little prayer and crossed my fingers - then plugged back in the power cord and tried to boot it up like normal. POOF!! It worked just as usual. I had the black and white screen saying that my laptop shut down improperly and did I want to start it up in Safe mode or Normally (because I did try to turn it off - using a hard shut down - to try to see if that would work, but it didn't). I said to start Normally.... lo and behold all began to work like a charm!

Thank you sooooo much for posting this fix for all of us to try. I was dreading taking it in someplace and getting charged a ton for a simple little fix like this.

My laptop is a HP Pavilion dv9720us Notebook PC. It has NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M graphics. I bought it about a year ago (perhaps even just over a year ago) and am probably out of warrenty. (double yikes!)

Again. Thanks for posting this fix. I would suggest to anyone to at least give it a try if you are having the same problem.

Take care-
Shannon

Omg! thank u for this post...i just bought my laptop n used for business. it had all my business info in there n it shut down like me on that...for weeks i thought i'd have to go thru all my receipts & invoices and had to reenter them again. I used ur method and voila i m back to using my laptop. Thanx peeps....this is sooo cool.

Dang!
Thanx man! This joint actually worked!

WORKS FOR MY ACER =]

Thank you so much for the tip to remove the battery and hold down the power button! That one worked for my toshiba satellite!

Thanks so much,
Caleb

Nanor
Thank you very much for your solution to the problem. It worked for my HP DV 6618cv. HP should include this in the troubleshooting section of the manual. I will never buy an HP product again, or better yet never buy any PC again, not worth the headaches. In 13 years of computer use never had a problem with a MAC.

Thank you, Nanor, It worked for me too, I was about to contact HP and send my laptop back. Thanks man you saved me from all the headache i was about to go through with HP.

Nanor you are the man!! your recommendation worked on a Dell Inspiron 700m as well. Thank you.

hey that worked! and i have a toshibia!! thank you so much!! i am so happy!!! wiwi..lol...thanks!!

I was skeptical, but after trying it worked on my dv9000. Incredible. Thanks!

Very, very helpful.. You know like others I was almost gave up, and then I read this. Mine is benq s41 and I install Leopard on it but I forget to change sleep mode. Then it sleep and never wake up. But I found it works now.. becoz of you, My Man..

So many thanks.. Sure you're my saviour