Question laptop won't boot challenge

[swofra]

Hello,
u430 won't display anything, not sure if it boots or not. probably not specific to the u430, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
Here are the following characteristics:

• has power: keyboard flashes once when power button is pressed. power button stays lit and keyboard backlighting will activate. power light and battery light illuminate. battery will charge (can tell by the flashing battery indicator) and drains. Will beep if power cable is unplugged so i know sound is getting power. Fan spins and occasionally hear the hard drive
• have removed battery and power cord and pressed the power button for a minute before hooking ac power back up and rebooting. No change.
• using a/c power without battery did not change anything
• completely drained battery and charged again to no effect
• hooked up to an external video display to no effect: with battery, a/c power, novo button, nothing displayed.
• novo button (designed to get you straight to BIOS) powers on machine to the same state as listed in the first bullet - no display
• removed hard drive and was able to access all the files via a usb enclosure hooked up to another laptop.
• reseated the RAM, wireless adapter, CMOS, and hard drive to no effect

laptop had been having issues with long install/boot times the past couple of months related to windows updates.
Even if the hard drive boot folder was corrupted, doesn't a motherboard based bios boot first? not quite sure how it is set up on the u430s.
Any ideas from those more experienced?
Thanks in advance?!

I have this question too

 

[webworkings]

It sounds like you have power, just no display. I see you said you hooked up an external display, but I am wondering if you made sure to check the keyboard for a key with what looks like two displays to see if that makes a difference. Some devices will not switch unless you push that button.

Additionally, it would also depend on the kind of display used. If say a TV, it may not work either way.

Should that not work, and you still get nothing on any display, then it may be the GPU or the motherboard. If that is the case then I would either contact the manufacturer (if still under warranty) or take it to a local tech.

 

[swofra]

thanks for the reply! I've tried hitting the external display button, both with the HDMI hooked up prior to power on and afterwards.
I know the TV supports HDMI as I have done it with other computers, but not sure on this model.
If there isn't anything else I can really do, maybe I'll try to look at trace line voltages to/from GPU.
I prolly should just save time and order a new mobo.