HomeI have an HP Omnibook 6100 notebook, it was given to my niece as a gift. The original owner was a medical tech so she erased everything of the hard drive I do not know if she used format or just erase, anyway now the notebook acts like it is booting but the monitor is blank I tried the recovery disks no help. I made a support disk no help. I am almost sure that the video driver is gone but I can’t find a way to reinstall it. I went to the HP site and they have their advice no help. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I did try an external monitor – no help.
You’ve tried connecting an external monitor and didn’t get any image on it, correct? It tells me that most likely there is nothing wrong with the LCD screen. Probably something else is going on.
The notebook starts booting and the screen is blank right from the beginning, correct? If that’s the case, then it is not a video driver related problem. When you have a bad or corrupted video driver, you still should see an image on the screen when you turn on the notebook. With a bad video driver the screen might turn black when Windows starts loading but not before that.
Try this. Start the laptop without the hard drive installed and see if you can get any image on the screen. If the laptop starts with video when the hard drive is removed, probably you have a bad hard drive. Maybe the original owner damaged the hard driver before she gave this notebook to you.
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May 4th, 2007 at 7:26 am
hi im having this same exact problem on my hp zt300. i tried taking off the hard drive and its still blank, so i placed it back in. But when i take off my battery and ram for a couple minutes and put it back in the computer starts normally then after 5 mins or so the screen starts flickering everywhere and soon becomes frozen. after a restart the computer goes back to a blank screen… any help??
thanks
May 4th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Carlos,
I think the problem could be somehow related to the memory module. If you have two memory slots, move the memory stick from one slot to another. Find a known good memory module and test the laptop again.
Also you can try this. Unplug the laptop LCD cable from the motherboard and test the laptop with an external monitor. If it works fine with the external monitor when the LCD is unplugged, something is wrong with the LCD or cable.
May 12th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
i called hp about it and they told me to take it off and try it again…i did it and the same thing happened…. so now i’m guessing its the memory stick.. im going to try purchasing a new one and ill come back with the results..thanks
November 22nd, 2007 at 6:40 pm
I am having close to the same problem. I think it is my video card but I am not sure. I have a Toshiba Satellite P100 model PSPA3U-12X01U. When I turn on my notebook, my screen powers on but I get no visuals only a lit black screen. It does work correctly when plugged into an external monitor however. My video card is not fully integrated into the motherboard and is a Nvidia Geforce Go 7600 G73M. I wasn’t sure if that was the problem, if so how can it be replaced as it does not have standard PCI-E, PCI, or AGP connections? Thanks for your time.
December 4th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Hi,
I have an hp pavilion dv 2000. When I boot it up the screen is totally black but the lights on the keyboard still light up as well as the start button. I can also hear the laptop running. I even tried to hook it up to an external monitor and still got a black screen. I was told it might be the motherboard? Any help with this I’d really appreciate. Thank you.
Kassandra.
December 4th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Kassandra,
Can you see the hard drive LED flashing, like it’s working?
Start the laptop with an external monitor again and try to switch video from internal mode to external with Fn and F4 key combination. Hold down Fn and press on F4 a few times. Still nothing?
January 8th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
hello, i have a dell inspiron 5150 laptop, and it was previously owned before. but as i was using it one day the computer whent into its normal sleeper mode(you know when you stop using it for a good while) so it goes into sleeper mode and then i touch the mouse pad and the screen goes completly dim. i went on using it with an old pc monitor. and somehow my brother fixed it once. but then it happend again and now i cant get it to go back to how it was. its just really dim, like i can barely read the screen. any help would be appreciated. thanks
January 8th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
danny,
Could be bad inverter board. You’ll find more information in the “screen inverter” and “screen problems” categories. Read about other laptops with the same problem and you’ll get the idea.
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:56 pm
If it is a bad inverter or burnt out backlight bulb (same symptom = LCD backlight not turning on) then you will still see the coloring of the pixels on the screen, meaning if you hold a flashlight to them you will still see the info on the screen. If this is the case, then either the backlight is burnt out (unlikely) or the power to the backlight isn’t coming in from the inverter (much more likely). Replacing the inverter is not terribly hard.
If the screen is blank but the computer is still booting (for instance, you here the Windows intro sound after a minute) then the best test is to plug in an external monitor and see if it displays. If it does, good. The LCD is bad or not connected properly. These can be fixed. If it doesn’t, good luck. If your laptop has an integrated graphics chip or a discrete GPU permanently attached to the mainboard, you are screwed since it’s rare that a mainboard replacement costs less than the value of a laptop. If you’ve got a removable graphics card then replacing it might fix the problem. It also might not if the mainboard is bad.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Same problem here, computer boots up gine but display is blank. i plugged in a monitor to the vga port on the side of the laptop and that monitor shows with vertical lines everywhere thru the picture. HP’s first solution was reinstall windows which fixed the problem, but only for about 1 week now it is doing the samething again! now HP is saying to replace the motherboard!
March 29th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Justin,
Apparently this is the video card failure. In most laptop the video card is integrated into the motherboard. When video card fails you have to replace the whole motherboard.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
…hey,i’ve a problem with my external monitor…
plz,have look at my problem…
i’ve a 17cm screen laptop…the screen is spoiled now and i’m using an external 15”LG monitor…the external monitor works fine with linux…but here’s my problem…when i try booting windows XP from a CD…after the “…press any key to boot from CD”…i press a key then the monitor goes blank and goes to sleep mode…i tried with my friend’s bigger size 17” monitor…i could see XP interface…
Do i have to do some screen settings on the 15” monitor or plz suggest me a suitable solution…i’l be grateful…
April 19th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
michael,
Here are a few thinks you can try.
1. Enter the BIOS setup menu on your laptop and set the external monitor as a primary screen. If you have that option of course.
2. I assume when the external 15″ monitor goes to sleep mode the laptop still keep running, right? Try switching video from internal to external mode using the keyboard shortcut. On Toshibas it’s Fn+F5, on HPs it’s Fn+F4, on IBMs it’s Fn+F7. Hold down the Fn key and at the same time press on the F_ key.
May 6th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Hi, I have a HP dv2000, my laptop screen is dim, but you can just about see things on it, i have it plugged into my tv via a HDMI cable. I have a separate NVidia graphics card. What is wrong with it? Is the screen broken? or the Graphics card no running porperly? i havnt changed any setting, it just wouldnt work suddenly. I have tried using a windows restore point from weks ago to fix it but nothing?
Cheers,
Chris
May 9th, 2009 at 9:22 am
I cracked my HP Pavillion dv2500 Notebook LCD screen, and its too expensive to replace right now. So I’m wanting to hook my notebook up to a monitor. I have a dell monitor and I also have a w17e HP LCD Monitor. When I reboot my notebook with either monitor hooked up the monitor stays black. I can tell that its trying to work but it won’t show me anything. I’ve tried the fn f4 thing and it still won’t work? What can I do now?
May 15th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
I have the same issue with my HP however the one thing that no one has mentioned is that , when I turn the laptop on i see the log and the the windows logo as well and then it goes blank from there. However if is start the computer on safe more or boot up from a Bart PE Cd it works fine, so I guess it only fails on normal mode. what do you guys think?
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:40 am
Hi,
I’ve got a problem withm my laptop screen (Toshiba P100-286). It doesn’t work as it should. After stating my laptop I can see Toshiba logo while is booting and then sometimes go blank. I can see everything on external monitor but not on the laptop. The other time laptop starts properly but after 20min or let say 30 min (time is vary) my laptop screen becomes blank again. I have reinstalled my Nvidia driver many times I have even reinstalled a whole system but the problem still occurs. There are moments where laptop is working fine but most of the time I have to switch to my external monitor LCD TV which is not very convienient as it’s up on the wall. Please advice what can cause this problem. Thanks in advance.
August 28th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I’m having the same exact problem as described by Chris and I use the same laptop (Toshiba P100-286). It just started a couple days ago. Was Chris ever able to find a solution to his problem or can anyone recommend one? So far what I’ve heard as possible fixes are replacing the video card but if the video card is part of the m/b then buying a new laptop would actually be more cost effective. If there is any other solution besides buying a new laptop, I would appreciate hearing it. Thanks.
August 28th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Jason,
If the laptop works with an external monitor than most likely the video card is OK.
Are you sure that laptop screen is blank? Take a closer look. Can you see a very very dim image on the screen?
If the image is still there, it’s likely that you have a faulty inverter board – a power supply for the backlight lamp. When inverter dies, the screen looses backlight and the image on the screen gets very dark.
Again, take a closer look on the screen.
August 28th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
carlos,
It’s possible that you have a problem with the video driver.
Instead of booting in Safe Mode try booting the laptop in VGA mode, it’s when all drivers are loaded except the video driver. If the laptop works fine in VGA mode, try uninstalling the video driver and booting the laptop in normal mode. After that reinstall the driver.
September 12th, 2009 at 11:43 am
My lptop was working fine last night but when i went to turn it on this morning it started up but the screen remains blank. I tried hooking up and external monitor but that screen is blank too. When i try inserting a disk into the drive it would read it but the screen would still be blank. My laptop is an LGR40.
September 19th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Brandi,
Take a closer look at the screen. Is it really blank? Maybe you can see a very faint image on the screen?
If the screen is blank, your problem could be related to the memory module. If you have two memory modules installed, try removing them one by one and test the laptop with each one separately. If you have only one module, try replacing it with a known good module.
January 24th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Hi,
I had the same black screen problem with my Compaq Presario f700.
I went the HP website to troubleshoot and found that a hard reset fixes the blank screen issue.
To perform a Hard Reset, unplug the AC power adapter and remove the battery, and then press and hold down the Power button for about 6 seconds. This will drain any residual charge in the capacitors and reset the power management controls to their default condition.
This fixed my problem.
I hope it helps you.
Best regards!