Laptop Trouble

[Slow Ride469]

I have a Toshiba laptop...when I try to start up,the power light comes on,the fan runs,but the screen stays black......

please help

 

[JudyJ]

Sorry but this sounds like it could be costly. You don't say if you're on AC or battery power? The major thing is the fact you have a black screen. If you have another monitor around you could try pluggin in your laptop to the other monitor just to rule out the chance that your monitors isn't DOA. Even if the monitor is DOA with the price of laptops today that would probably dictate a new system.

The power light is curious. If you're on AC power it could be a bad power cord they go bad all the time and it could be your battery is dead even though you have it plugged in? Most anything else should give you something on the screen even it your HDD is hosed or you have bad memory. Power supplies don't go bad very often but again unless its a relatively new high end laptop the time may be right for a new present to yourself. Can you boot your Windows installation or recovery disk? Don't re-install but it could rule out some type of nasty Trojan that may have scramble your boot sector.

Good Luck.

 

[Friendly_Guy]

You could have turned your monitor off. There are settings to turn the LCD screen off so it only pushes the picture out of the VGA / HDMI port.

There's usually a button marked CRT/LCD on the keyboard, probably written in grey or blue under one of the function or number keys.

You'd want to hit the Fn key and the CRT/LCD key at the same time. Do that 2 or 3 times with the system powered on and see what happens.

If that doesn't work, try what the guy above me said and plug another monitor in to see if it outputs anything that way. (Might need to hit the Fn CRT/LCD button to make that work)

When it boots, do you hear the start up sounds on the speakers? If so, it means the computer itself isn't fucked up.

 

[SweetErika]

If it's the screen, it could be a fairly easy fix. We have a netbook that had a dead screen. The problem was that the wire powering the screen had come off. My husband was able to fix it himself with a soldering iron and it didn't take that long (though we already knew what the problem was and he's good with computers). I don't recommend trying to fix something like that yourself unless you really know what you're doing, but that type of problem shouldn't be too costly to have fixed professionally.

If you can get another screen to work, back up everything and get estimates for the diagnosis and repair(s). If the screen is totally dead, it might be better to replace the laptop than to have it repaired (last I heard, screen replacement was pricey, and with the cost of most laptops these days, it's often better to just buy a new one on sale). You can always pull your HD if it's fine and you want to use it to load your current data on a new system, or even simply use it as a tool for saving stuff (we have an external laptop HD case that we use with older laptop HDs for those purposes).

 

[jeff999]

Check that the screen doesn't have a faint unlit image on it. There are two parts to a screen - the display area itself, which carries the image but which does not emit light, and the light, which is a strip along the bottom (or top) inside. What yopu see is the striplight illuminating the pixels. If there is a faint image (try using a torch) then the inverter has failed. The inverter creates a high voltage to power the light from the low voltage battery. You can buy replacement inverters on ebay and can replace them yourself IF you understand how to fix stuff and can be very delicate. I don't know about Tosh, but Dell, for example, provide all the service instructions online.

If it isn't the inverter then try using a spare screen (VGA) to check the unit out. If you are sure it is the screen you can buy one on ebay as a replacement. Just buy a faulty laptop of the same model (with a known good screen) and swap the parts. It isn't as hard as it seems.

Don't try and dismantle until you have the service instructions - if you undo the wrong things you may have a bigger problem to solve.

 

[PaulBlart]

Hurl it out the window and go to the Apple store.

 

[Slow Ride469]

thanks for the help and advice....I tried plugging another monitor in...nothing happened........An important fact...it's been doing this for a while,but after a few atempts ,it would finally come up,if that tells you anything

 

[Emerald Eyed]

thanks for the help and advice....I tried plugging another monitor in...nothing happened........An important fact...it's been doing this for a while,but after a few atempts ,it would finally come up,if that tells you anything

If you can finally get it to open up.... used your partitioned drive to reinstall it.. might be a bad driver or something