Laptop Black Screen. No Bios Boot

[TURIN]

Good afternoon all.

My daughter's HP Laptop suddenly gave up the ghost yesterday, At first it just started to reboot itself for no reason, then it just refused to boot.

Windows 10.

The fan runs, the power LED is lit but the HDD LED is dead.

This is what I've tried....

1. Boot to the Bios after taking battery out and holding down various combinations of buttons, Esc, Win & V, Win & B etc. No dice.
2. Disconnected and reconnected the HDD.
3. Removed the two RAM chip cards individually and together, swapped the over, tried booting with either or both slots empty.
4. Created a USB boot file.
5. Trawled through the interweb/Pprune all day looking for further ideas.

I've ordered a new CMOS Battery just in case but I doubt thats it.

I have an identical machine that works fine. I'm toying with the idea of swapping the HDDs over but don't want to bugger this one up too.

Any suggestions ? I'm thinking its probably the motherboard or the CPUs goosed.

Thanks.

[Asturias56]

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-System-and-Recovery/Laptop-keeps-rebooting-unexpectedly/td-p/6471127 has some ideas on machines and reboots

HP's advice in your case is https://store.hp.com/us/en/tech-takes/how-do-i-fix-laptop-that-wont-turn-on

Firstly - is it charged or charging (i flag this because yesterday my HP did the same - luckily her inside pointed out I hadn't turned it on at the wall plug before using it for several hours...................

[Jetstream67]

The ideas and suggestions to date are good

Also try removing all USB devices before starting and
Also try connecting an external monitor
Also try turning it upside down/sidewise and see if it starts (soldering problems, foreign objects etc.)
- also try swapping the power adapters and batteries between the laptops just for completeness (doesn't seem likely but check anyway)

If you're seeing no boot screens / info and no bleeps either then a main board power, main board, CPU or bios problem is likely (most PC's will happily boot without a CMOS battery but date /time/region/keyboard info are unavailable until windows is up.

Assuming you can get to the HDD I personally would remove it, stick it in a USB caddy, connect to another PC and if it's accessible make a copy/backup of any valuable data etc before things go much further.

If the drive data is not accessible that might be, or itself be a victim of , the problem... (note that a failed HDD will usually have been be reported via obvious Bios warnings about faults with / lack of a system/boot drive)

[Loose rivets]

The older HP's used to have a problem with the graphics chip connection. For connection, read a bazillion solder points. Re-balling was a black art. Putting the motherboard in an oven was one last ditch possibility, having leapt over a lot of last ditches.

The Rivetess' HP was dead. I did some of the suggested things and on a quick rebuild it ran the boot sequence. Hooray. On the detailed rebuild, it was dead again.

Back in the UK one of my old neighbours fettles such kit. He'd had some success with cutting Coke tins as shields and using a hot air gun on the chip.

The writer takes no responsibility for thermally-distorted and otherwise molecularly altered hardware.

[TURIN]

Thank you for the replies.
There are no USB devices plugged in, I even removed the DVD drive first. I also swapped the batteries and I know the power adapter is good as it works on an identical machine. I've also given it a shake and tried it in different orientations.
I've tried several of the HP 'fixes' too but no joy yet. I'll keep at it.

[treadigraph]

I had a Lenovo that would refuse to boot occasionally - recommended fix was to take out the battery and CMOS battery for half an hour to make sure there was no residual power. Seemed to work, the reboot. (The Lenovo heap of do-dos I'm typing this on won't even let me take the main battery out without a complicated dismantling routine...)

[nonsense]

I have an identical machine that works fine. I'm toying with the idea of swapping the HDDs over but don't want to bugger this one up too.

That would be my suggestion...

[TURIN]

Update: Tried a hard drive caddy, couldn't get it to read the hard drive so ended up swapping it with my good laptop. Booted up fine, so its not the hard drive.

Suspect a motherboard issue.