Dead laptop

cookie66

Hi guys I hope some kind
mser will read this and be able to help me. My daughter has a hp laptop
and today she turned it on only to find a blank screen with a dot
in the top left corner and no flashing hardrive lights.
If anyone could please advise it would be really appreiciated
Thanks in advance

caveat_emptor

Is this when connected with mains adaptor?

rdpro

re-seat the hard drive first (if easily accessible), but potentially it's a corrupt partition.

aldrich29

Is the Laptop running and only the screen is blank?

rdpro

if the 'dot' is a flashing underscore, it means the pc is unable to recognise the boot partition on the hard drive.

You could also try removing mains and battery, then retrying after a few minutes

cookie66

Hi thanks for all the advise. Right the laptop only works from
the mains as daughter ruined the battery some time ago. I
have already taken out the battery and put it back on. The
laptop turns on the hp logo appears then the screen goes blank.
I really think it has died and do u all think it will need a new
hard drive if yes do u k ow how much they roughly cost
thanks everyone

rdpro

about £40 - it might be fixable though (software fault rather than hardware). Do you have a diagnostics CD or a diagnostics option in the Boot Menu/Options?

Browntoa

I have sticks of laptop ram that have failed on laptops and stop them booting , if it has two when you remove the cover take out one at a time and try it

cookie66

Not sure if we have a cd and I can't see The options on the
screen as it is blank But thanks again. All
advice welcome

rdpro

The Boot Options menu will show on the HP screen - usually press the 'Esc' button when on the HP logo screen to access it.

(You will see something like


<Esc=Boot Menu> <F1=Start up> <F10=System Recovery


at the bottom of the screen)

cookie66

Oh do u mean take out the memory one at a time and then
start it up each time after I have