Black screen on laptop help needed please

robfowler78

Hi looking for a bit of help I have a laptop that I tried to connect to my TV through HDMI. The TV wouldn't display the laptop so I tried the duplicate, extend options. Had no look but when I turned the Laptop back on the PC turns on as normal but were you would normally put on your windows password in the screen just stays black. It flickers from black to light black then just stays on with no picture. It's a Lenovo G50 laptop tried to access the bios or safe mode no luck keeps just booting up and going to the black screen.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

NickNickleby

Try something easy first.
Power off, disconnect power cord, remove battery pack from underneath, press the power button for about 20 seconds. Then put it all back together and try again.

THis worked for me previously, can't remember the make at the time.

robfowler78

NickNickleby wrote: »

Try something easy first.
Power off, disconnect power cord, remove battery pack from underneath, press the power button for about 20 seconds. Then put it all back together and try again.

THis worked for me previously, can't remember the make at the time.

Tried that no luck.

NickNickleby

Hi Rob,
I went through agony previously with this kind of thing. In one case the CPU was knackered, and at first I didn;t realise there was a specific indicator for this. The CAPS LOCK button light was flashing some pattern. THat required a lot of work - if you think this is your situation, I'll tell you exactly what I did to recover. Be prepared for pain.

Another time it was some sort of corruption of the OS. This required invoking the 'Recovery' function, and more pain, but less than above. Once again, I can tell you how I did it if it seems like its your problem.

Another time it was the laptop getting its knickers in a twist when I powered it off during a connection to a big screen!! But my remedy above fixed THAT one.

The solutions are long winded, hence I'll wait for you to say which one is likely to be your situation.

Bear one thing in mind - getting to the BIOS will work, its just a case of getting lucky with the timing of hitting the BIOS key on ower up. (I think itsd F2).

Cheers

robfowler78

NickNickleby wrote: »

Hi Rob,
I went through agony previously with this kind of thing. In one case the CPU was knackered, and at first I didn;t realise there was a specific indicator for this. The CAPS LOCK button light was flashing some pattern. THat required a lot of work - if you think this is your situation, I'll tell you exactly what I did to recover. Be prepared for pain.

Another time it was some sort of corruption of the OS. This required invoking the 'Recovery' function, and more pain, but less than above. Once again, I can tell you how I did it if it seems like its your problem.

Another time it was the laptop getting its knickers in a twist when I powered it off during a connection to a big screen!! But my remedy above fixed THAT one.

The solutions are long winded, hence I'll wait for you to say which one is likely to be your situation.

Bear one thing in mind - getting to the BIOS will work, its just a case of getting lucky with the timing of hitting the BIOS key on ower up. (I think itsd F2).

Cheers

Hey Nick

Thanks for all your suggestions I'd say it has something to do with the connection to Tv i was messing about with resolutions and display options last night which must have caused some glitch or crash.

The strange thing is Lenovo have a recovery button which is supposed to access straight to the bios but I can't see the screen it just turns the laptop on and I have the same issue. I tried connection up as VGA which gave me the picture on my projector then I hit the duplicate option for to show on the laptop and projector and I was back to the same problem now VGA also goes to black screen. I hit f2 on boot but I can't tell if I'm in the bios or not as the screen just stays black but on if you know what I mean

Very frustrating.

NickNickleby

Hi Rob,

I've a Lenovo laptop, but I'm not aware of any recovery button. As far as I recall, the sequence I followed was : power on ; hit a key (f2 or Enter or something) and it went into recovery.

Anyway, there's a way to see if the pc is actually 'running' in the background. You'll need access to your router, and from there you'll have to look at your local network. The first thing that happens after laptop power up, is that its WiFi connects to the router and gets an IP address. In the router you should be able to find a table of allocated ip addresses. It may be obvious which one is the laptop- I think some sort of query results in the laptop name being sent back to the router so it may be easily identified. In my own router, it looks like this:
LAPTOP-T4Jxxxxx_Wireless 30:52:CB:D2:xx:xx 192.168.1.13

obviously I put in the xx's (hahaha talk about overkill).

from another device try to 'ping' the appropriate address. If you can, then its up and running. However, you're still not out of the woods, but at least you know something more. In one of my instances, I was able to get at the 'c' drive over the network and copy everything to another pc. I was then free to do whatever I fancied to try to get it working again.

I'll try to remember what laptop it was and exactly what I did.

Cheers

NickNickleby

found something on the net:

make sure its completely powered off. Then:
power on ; immediately close screen; open screen again. Sounds somewhat plausible and you can try it in less time than it took me to type it :-)

robfowler78

NickNickleby wrote: »

Hi Rob,

I've a Lenovo laptop, but I'm not aware of any recovery button. As far as I recall, the sequence I followed was : power on ; hit a key (f2 or Enter or something) and it went into recovery.

Anyway, there's a way to see if the pc is actually 'running' in the background. You'll need access to your router, and from there you'll have to look at your local network. The first thing that happens after laptop power up, is that its WiFi connects to the router and gets an IP address. In the router you should be able to find a table of allocated ip addresses. It may be obvious which one is the laptop- I think some sort of query results in the laptop name being sent back to the router so it may be easily identified. In my own router, it looks like this:
LAPTOP-T4Jxxxxx_Wireless 30:52:CB:D2:xx:xx 192.168.1.13

obviously I put in the xx's (hahaha talk about overkill).

from another device try to 'ping' the appropriate address. If you can, then its up and running. However, you're still not out of the woods, but at least you know something more. In one of my instances, I was able to get at the 'c' drive over the network and copy everything to another pc. I was then free to do whatever I fancied to try to get it working again.

I'll try to remember what laptop it was and exactly what I did.

Cheers

Hey

Thanks for the reply I had forgotten about the network. I'll try that when I get home I actually have some software on it that acts as a server so I might try typing in the win password blindly and see if it shows up on the network. Never know it might work lol fingers crossed. I'll let you know how I get on. Thanks agfain for taking the time to look at it. By the way the Lenovo recovery button ( you need to press with a pen ) is beside were the power plug goes. Never new it was there untill I started googling this issue

robfowler78

robfowler78 wrote: »

Hey

Thanks for the reply I had forgotten about the network. I'll try that when I get home I actually have some software on it that acts as a server so I might try typing in the win password blindly and see if it shows up on the network. Never know it might work lol fingers crossed. I'll let you know how I get on. Thanks agfain for taking the time to look at it. By the way the Lenovo recovery button ( you need to press with a pen ) is beside were the power plug goes. Never new it was there untill I started googling this issue

It's on the network and I can access Serviio and play movies on the TV just cant see the laptop screen has to be a graphics card issue or something. Has to be related to trying to get it on the tv last night for sure. So the Laptop works fine minus the screen lol

NickNickleby

Did you see the bit in post #7?

power off. power on - immediately close lid; open lid. Bingo !! (we hope )

a similar thing happens with my headphones. eg:
plug in headphones, listen to music, shut down pc, wife unplugs headphones and puts them away; I power up the laptop again, speaker not working. Fix? plug in headphones and then unplug them again.

which is why I thought the lid thing might be plausible...

robfowler78

NickNickleby wrote: »

Did you see the bit in post #7?

power off. power on - immediately close lid; open lid. Bingo !! (we hope )

a similar thing happens with my headphones. eg:
plug in headphones, listen to music, shut down pc, wife unplugs headphones and puts them away; I power up the laptop again, speaker not working. Fix? plug in headphones and then unplug them again.

which is why I thought the lid thing might be plausible...

Probably would have worked if I hadn't set the lid to do nothing when closed as I was using it sometimes to play movies an old projector.......

robfowler78

robfowler78 wrote: »

Probably would have worked if I hadn't set the lid to do nothing when closed as I was using it sometimes to play movies an old projector.......

Just an update brought it in to be checked. The tech guy said the graphics card is gone. He said he would need to look at it for assessment cost 40quid. But when I Google replacement graphics this model is built in on board so not replaceable. Looks like a new laptop is needed. Thanks for your help.

Johnboy1951

robfowler78 wrote: »

It's on the network and I can access Serviio and play movies on the TV just cant see the laptop screen has to be a graphics card issue or something. Has to be related to trying to get it on the tv last night for sure. So the Laptop works fine minus the screen lol

Have you tried booting the laptop using a Linux LiveCD/DVD/USB-stick?

If the BIOS is set to boot first from CD/USB then it might confirm (or not) that you have a graphics issue.

robfowler78

That's a great idea problem is I can't access the BIOS to boot from USB. So even with a USB boot stick it won't read it.

Johnboy1951

robfowler78 wrote: »

That's a great idea problem is I can't access the BIOS to boot from USB. So even with a USB boot stick it won't read it.

I thought most laptops were set to boot from CD/DVD first (by default).
Of course that might well have been changed since.

You might also consider resetting the BIOS to default to see if that would help.

robfowler78

Doesn't seem to be it may have been changed in the past alright. How do I reset the BIOS if I can't access it?

Johnboy1951

robfowler78 wrote: »

Doesn't seem to be it may have been changed in the past alright. How do I reset the BIOS if I can't access it?

Usually by disconnecting the small disc battery and shorting out two pins.
This discharges the power holding the settings and they revert to default when the battery is reinserted.

The exact method is device specific, so you need to access the manual .... or someone with the same device might be able to help.

BTW, which version is your laptop?
Lenovo G50 - 30? - 80? - XX?

robfowler78

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Usually by disconnecting the small disc battery and shorting out two pins.
This discharges the power holding the settings and they revert to default when the battery is reinserted.

The exact method is device specific, so you need to access the manual .... or someone with the same device might be able to help.

BTW, which version is your laptop?
Lenovo G50 - 30? - 80? - XX?

It's the G50 I looked on YouTube yesterday at a video to disassemble one but I couldnt see the battery. I actually burned a Ubuntu boot DVD and tried it the DVD spins the screen lit up but stayed black same as it does without the boot DVD

Johnboy1951

robfowler78 wrote: »

It's the G50 I looked on YouTube yesterday at a video to disassemble one but I couldnt see the battery. I actually burned a Ubuntu boot DVD and tried it the DVD spins the screen lit up but stayed black same as it does without the boot DVD

ZENER

Can't you just remove/disconnect the internal hard disk ? Then the machine should then try the next device in the boot sequence.

Can you see the machine POST screen at all ? At any stage can you see any text on the screen during boot up ?

Ken

robfowler78

ZENER wrote: »

Can't you just remove/disconnect the internal hard disk ? Then the machine should then try the next device in the boot sequence.

Can you see the machine POST screen at all ? At any stage can you see any text on the screen during boot up ?

Ken

Hey Ken no the screen backlight lights up and stays on but nothing shows on the screen. Yesterday I was able to login to windows blindly and see my files on the network.I got it working under VGA and tried a system restore to go back to factory settings. When it went to boot into the restore the VGA connection went and I couldn't see any further I had to turn it of after a few hours so it doesn't even boot were I can log in blind now.
I think it's for the bin now as the lad in the tech store said Graphic card is gone and it's on board so can't replace.

ZENER

What's the model number of your machine ? G50 is the series but there should be another number - like G50-70 or G50-80 ?
From what I can see the CMOS battery is beside the SODIMM slots but it depends on the exact model.

Ken

robfowler78

ZENER wrote: »

What's the model number of your machine ? G50 is the series but there should be another number - like G50-70 or G50-80 ?
From what I can see the CMOS battery is beside the SODIMM slots but it depends on the exact model.

Ken

I'll take a look when I get home it just says G50 on the front on a sticker I checked it yesterday I'll look for another number.

robfowler78

robfowler78 wrote: »

I'll take a look when I get home it just says G50 on the front on a sticker I checked it yesterday I'll look for another number.

It's a G50-30

ZENER

It looks like the battery is soldered to the board:



Here's the service manual for your machine. There are keys that activate what Dell call incognito mode where the screen is turned off, page 34 shows this key as F9.

There is another possibility - laptops detect when the lid is closed by using usually a magnetic sensor. The magnet will be on the outside edge of the screen somewhere with the sensor on the palmrest close to where the magnet will locate when the lid is closed. You could try holding a magnet over the edges of the palmrest to try trigger the sensor ? Worth a try !

Ken

robfowler78

ZENER wrote: »

It looks like the battery is soldered to the board:



Here's the service manual for your machine. There are keys that activate what Dell call incognito mode where the screen is turned off, page 34 shows this key as F9.

There is another possibility - laptops detect when the lid is closed by using usually a magnetic sensor. The magnet will be on the outside edge of the screen somewhere with the sensor on the palmrest close to where the magnet will locate when the lid is closed. You could try holding a magnet over the edges of the palmrest to try trigger the sensor ? Worth a try !

Ken

Thanks Ken I'll try those tomorrow. I have pressed f9 a few time before ( I've pressed most button at this stage lol ) no luck. I'll check the magnet next. The only way the VGA option worked was with the lid closed once I opened both screens went black so might be something in that. Pitty they solder the batteries suppose the less you can repair the more chance of buying new laptop instead.

Purple Mountain

I remember this happening my last laptop and someone told me it was the black screen of death and no way back!

robfowler78

Purple Mountain wrote: »

I remember this happening my last laptop and someone told me it was the black screen of death and no way back!

Seems to be the same now to find a similar cheap laptop to have more problems with down the line lol.

Johnboy1951

robfowler78 wrote: »

Seems to be the same now to find a similar cheap laptop to have more problems with down the line lol.

Before I would give up on that machine I would disassemble it and remove the BIOS battery ....... even if I had to de-solder it or otherwise detach it.

I would consider it worth my while before giving up and dumping the machine

robfowler78

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Before I would give up on that machine I would disassemble it and remove the BIOS battery ....... even if I had to de-solder it or otherwise detach it.

I would consider it worth my while before giving up and dumping the machine

I wouldn't know how lol I'll salvage the HDD and other bits might come in handy further down the road.

Johnboy1951

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Before I would give up on that machine I would disassemble it and remove the BIOS battery ....... even if I had to de-solder it or otherwise detach it.

I would consider it worth my while before giving up and dumping the machine

robfowler78 wrote: »

I wouldn't know how lol I'll salvage the HDD and other bits might come in handy further down the road.

There are sure to be youtube videos about disassembly.