Laptop black screen with cursur wont shut off

[knever3]

Hp laptop turns on with black screen with immovable cursor in left corner. It does not beep when turning on, cannot get into safe mode. When you close the top and reopen it later the laptop does not shut down or turn off. The black screen remains with cursor. Power light stays on in front with no changes, please help, tried removing and reinstalling ram and hard drive nothing works.

 

[hang-the-9]

Have you tried NEW RAM and Hard Drive, or at least usable old ones from another computer? Try turning it on without the battery, did that work? When you turn it on, does the BIOS screen show up? Can you get to the BIOS configuration? If not, you can try to reset the BIOS - Remove the battery, open the case (bios battery is usually under the palm rest or keyboard), take out the BIOS battery for a few seconds. If that does nothing, try new RAM. If that does not work, you need to have it looked at by a repair shop or replace the laptop. Unless this is a brand new higher-end laptop, the cost to fix is usually not worth it. You probably need a new motherboard if the above fixes did not work for you.

 

[knever3]

I have removed the ram and tried it in both locations, tried only one stick of each, nothing. I have unplugged the bios battery and regular battery and held the power button, nothing changes. I have removed the hard drive turned it on and off, reinstalled the hard drive, nothing changes. I have ejected the DVD drive (which is the only thing that makes noise when booting, chunk chunk) and the unit powers up to the black screen with the prompt to press esc. F8 then reboots five times. Now back to the same black screen with cursor.

I don't have any spare laptop parts to try so that's not an option now. I have heard that the computer can't wake up from sleep mode, I don't know if that helps or not. Please any more options to try??

Thanks for the reply

 

[hang-the-9]

Can you get to the BIOS screen and get into the system configuration? You said you are getting a prompt to hit a key, what's the exact messages you see when booting? If you see a message to hit a key to enter setup, do so, does it work?

 

[knever3]

I am seeing the screen to enter bios it shows HP invent and says press esc to change boot order or f10 to enter setup. I can enter the bios and have run the diagnostic tool and it completes with nothing found. I just put in a copy of windows xp to see if it can boot and it starts to run then when I select repair windows it says no hard drive found. Ahhh!!!

 

[hang-the-9]

Well the good news is that your RAM is OK. But you will need to try a different hard drive, maybe try to reseat the one you played around with. It may still be a motherboard issue but you can start with the hard drive first.

 

[knever3]

Ok, I tried to reseat the hard drive and it didn't change anything. I guess I will have to take it somewhere if the computer can't fix the hard drive. Question, what does the self diagnosis tool check for when it takes about 40 minutes? Doesn't it check for a hard drive?? Thanks for all your help.

 

[hang-the-9]

Did you watch what the diagnostics did? Did it do a drive scan and actually scan the drive? Did you see the hard drive listed in the BIOS when you went there? If it does RAM testing, that takes a while, so do some other testing depending on the tool used.

 

[knever3]

It says primary hard disk self test. The actual hard drive specs are not listed anywhere in the bios. The test completes the quick test and the full test and says completed. It does not say failed or list the actual hard drive.

 

[aford10]

Look at the hard drive, and find out what manufacturer made it. Go to their website, and download their application to create a bootable test disc. Use that disc to run a scan on your hard drive, to determine if the hard drive is damaged.