This article provides troubleshooting tips for fixing a black screen on an HP laptop, ranked from easiest and most likely to most difficult and least likely.
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Causes of a defective HP laptop screen
There are many reasons why your HP laptop’s display won’t turn on even though you can hear the computer working. It could be as simple as adjusting the brightness or sleep mode, or it could be something more challenging like displaying horizontal line, such as corrupted or outdated drivers or worn-out physical parts. Whatever the problem, you may be able to get it going again with a few troubleshooting steps.
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How to fix an HP laptop screen that won’t turn on
If you can hear your HP laptop working (for example, the hard drive spinning) and the lights and indicators are blinking, but the screen remains black, then you can go through a few troubleshooting steps to see if you can get it to work again to get.
- Adjust the brightness. Make sure you haven’t set the brightness of your laptop screen to the minimum. There must be a function key or buttons on the keyboard that controls the brightness of the screen. Use those buttons to increase the brightness of your system to see if your display becomes visible.
- Turn off sleep mode. Sometimes hibernation files can get corrupted. Disabling this feature and restarting your computer may resolve the issue and allow your laptop’s display to turn back on.
- Update your graphics driver. An outdated graphics driver may prevent the screen from displaying correctly. You can also try updating the BIOS as this could also be the cause of the problem.
- Perform a hard reset. If there is a bug in the firmware or other software application that is preventing the computer screen from showing, hard resetting your computer can fix the problem. To hard reset an HP laptop:
- Disconnect all peripherals and cables connected to your computer.
- Make sure the computer is disconnected from the power supply and remove the battery.
- Press and hold the power button for at least 15 seconds.
- Then reconnect the power, remove the battery from the computer, and restart your computer.
Performing a hard reset is not the same as factory resetting your HP laptop. The hard reset should not erase your data from your computer, but it could clear any driver or firmware errors.
- Connect to an external monitor to test the LCD and LCD cable. Connect to the external display with a VGA cable or connect to a TV as an external display with an HDMI cable, depending on the connectors available on your system. Then restart your computer. After your computer restarts and it does not appear on the external monitor, you may need to press the F4key (or another key with a rectangular box with vertical lines on the left and right — intended to indicate a monitor) on your keyboard. It’s the external monitor key and should tell your laptop to connect to the external display. If the computer is displayed on the external monitor, the LCD screen or the internal LCD cable may be defective. Replace the LCD cable. If that doesn’t work, the LCD screen will need to be replaced and will probably need to go to the repair shop, as replacing the monitor can be delicate.
- Reseat the RAM. Laptops are carried around and can be bumped or shaken when moved, which can cause the RAM to come loose from the slot. This will require you to remove the cover from the bottom of the computer, but once you remove it, you can take the RAM out and reseat it to make sure it’s secure. If you have two RAM cards in your computer, you should also remove them one by one to see if one of the memory cards is not working. Take out the first one and restart the computer; if the screen turns on then the RAM is bad. Otherwise, replace that RAM and take out the other one to test it. If you find that you have a bad memory card,
Know when to call in the professionals
If you’ve tried the steps above and none of them worked, then maybe it’s time to call in the professionals, or at the very least, someone more confident in digging into your laptop’s case. If you’re not sure who to turn to, read How do I get my computer fixed? for some quick tips on what to do next.