Black / blank screen on laptop?

searchlight123

Acer aspire 5536 running windows 10 upgraded from 7 home.
i only use this as a backup device and switched it on this evening for the first time in 2 weeks and although all the correct lights (battery, power supply etc) come on and the laptop HD sounds like it is booting, the screen doesn't flicker. it just remains completely black with no flicker of life?

any ideas? i tried taking the battery out and then back in, but no difference made.

many thanks for any suggestions.

pete-20-11

Can you plug in an external monitor?

Or remote control it from another computer on the same network, if you have such software installed (or access via file share).


My laptop has a weird issue where if you press the brightness keys when Windows is running the screen goes extremely dim. The only way to fix it is to reboot and hold brightness up during the initial boot.

esuhl

Is there a button on your keyboard that allows you to switch between the laptop screen and an external monitor? Often there's an icon that looks like two boxes on top of each other, or 1 or 2 monitors, and holding down the Fn key and pressing it might turn on the laptop display.

Otherwise, can you get into the BIOS by holding down the relevant key as the laptop boots up? That would confirm that the screen works, and again, maybe there's an option in there to enable/disable the laptop screen and/or an external one.

Otherwise, if there's nothing at all on screen when you boot and you can't access the BIOS, maybe there's a hardware problem. Maybe the screen (or its connectors) have broken or become detached...? As Pete says, you could try plugging in an external monitor to see if the laptop itself is working and booting up properly.

searchlight123

esuhl wrote: »

Is there a button on your keyboard that allows you to switch between the laptop screen and an external monitor? Often there's an icon that looks like two boxes on top of each other, or 1 or 2 monitors, and holding down the Fn key and pressing it might turn on the laptop display.

Otherwise, can you get into the BIOS by holding down the relevant key as the laptop boots up? That would confirm that the screen works, and again, maybe there's an option in there to enable/disable the laptop screen and/or an external one.

Otherwise, if there's nothing at all on screen when you boot and you can't access the BIOS, maybe there's a hardware problem. Maybe the screen (or its connectors) have broken or become detached...? As Pete says, you could try plugging in an external monitor to see if the laptop itself is working and booting up properly.

many thanks esuhl for your suggestions.
i will try these out and report back.