When powering laptop, fan turns but stops a few seconds, after a minute it runs fast in 10 or so seconds then stops again. It just alternates with that, HDD running, no display.
What model laptop?
From that description, it could be quite a few things - Power supply/battery, CPU, RAM, GPU, motherboard. Anything happen since the last time it was working?
Your best bet is probably checking all of the parts.