Mr. Mugen

I have a compaq presario laptop (actually she does) and she turned it on and it sounded like it fired up but the monitor is black. Hard drive and everything else seems to be running fine but no picture. Any quick fix ideas? It sits on a bench. No naging around or moving ehat so ever. It is about 5 years old and runs like a champ normally.
Thanks for any insight,
Kevin

proanti1

My Feedback: (2)

Edit: Oops, missed the part about it being a laptop.

Foxy

This is a common problem with laptops. You may find if you take it out in the sun you CAN see a very feint monitor image. The signal convertor is probably broken. Try giving it a good hard tap above the F keys in the middle, or open and close it a few times (the lid).

DarkFire989

Could it possibly be the cable ribbon running to the monitor that's worn out?

Foxy

Easy way to test, if it's the converter you will be able to see a feint image of what's on the screen from some angles, if it's something more physical like a damaged ribbon cable, the screen will be completely off.

narwalrus

My Feedback: (4)

Upon Googling, seems like a fairly common problem with this model. Without owning one, it is difficult to diagnose as all computers are different. Try looking into it and giving more details if possible, as well as attempting other solutions such as an external monitor. Post back here when you can!

Mr. Mugen

Good ideas! This is why I asked here. Such a good mix of folks here. Here is what I know for sure. HAven't had any real time to look at it yet. Going to now. It goes through the initial start up process fine and you can see it. When it starts to open windows is when it fails. I see the bar indicating something is loading and that's it.

External monitor? Hmmm...I will look into that. Suppose my desktop monitor should work fine for testing. Thanks for the pointers fellas.

Kevin

splcrazy

I should have tested my old laptop to an external monitor before putting it under my cars rear wheel and doing a burnout on it blasting it to peices , lol it probably was still working .

Mr. Mugen

Well it seems like it works fine until I put it in normal mode. I ran safe mode and it worked fine. Ran it in safe with networking and it was fine. Downloaded combofix and ran it. Tried it in normal mode and it goes through bios and into windows start up and the screen goes to almost black, more of a real dark green. Can hear desktop opening. That is about it.

Kevin

P.S. I also ran a comprehensive hard drive test and it passed.

HJJFFFAA

Since it works in safe mode it's most likely drivers or some other software issue.

Link119

My Feedback: (1)

Reinstall the drivers for video. They might have gotten messed up somehow.

Foxy

Yeh, it's a video driver thing. Try this. Go into safe mode, right click on 'Computer', choose properties, find device manager, open it. In device manager, you will find a section 'display adapters', delete anything in it, restart. See what happens.

Mr. Mugen

Well that is exactly what I just did and it worked! Thanks Foxy.

Kevin