Solved! My Laptop doesn't start when it's turned on

[Alennka]

I have a 10+ year old Acer laptop running Windows 7. I turned it on the other day and basically nothing happened. The light to indicate it is receiving mains power is on. When I press the 'on' button the light to indicate the laptop is on lights up and you can hear a fan start running, but the screen remains completely blank.

I've tried removing the battery, leaving it out for 30mins before replacing and restarting. I've tried using an HDMI cable to connect to an external monitor and still don't get a picture. I've also noticed that no other indicator lights, mainly the HDD light, flash on at all at any time.

I'm thinking this is probably a hardware failure but was hoping someone might be able to suggest some other cause and possible fix I can try myself.

 

[webworkings]

When you connected the external monitor, did you try it while the device was off? Also, you may have to press an "external monitor" button. Could be the f4 button or a button with two monitors on it, for the external monitor to work.

You may also want to try hitting CTRL + SHIFT + WIN + B to try and reset your graphics driver as another possible fix.

If you can't see on the external monitor at all, or the problem occurs on the external monitor as well, then it is probably the graphics card/GPU that is the problem, which may require the motherboard be replaced.

 

[Alennka]

When you connected the external monitor, did you try it while the device was off? Also, you may have to press an "external monitor" button. Could be the f4 button or a button with two monitors on it, for the external monitor to work.

You may also want to try hitting CTRL + SHIFT + WIN + B to try and reset your graphics driver as another possible fix.

If you can't see on the external monitor at all, or the problem occurs on the external monitor as well, then it is probably the graphics card/GPU that is the problem, which may require the motherboard be replaced.

Thanks for these suggestions. I have now tried all these ideas, still no luck.

 

[pleasehelpme742]

Is your computer dead? Try charging it for the night and then in the morning see what happens

 

[webworkings]

They didn't say it was dead. It is the display.

If nothing mentioned works, then you may well have a dead/dying GPU and maybe even a bad motherboard.