[gra]

Lights are on, but nobody is home............... the fans are also on and the CD drive works too.

A couple of days ago I booted my HP laptop up as usual and noticed that my vista desktop loaded a little quicker than normal. Unfortunately the mouse pointer wouldn't move, CTRL ALT DEL wouldn't work and neither did the window key, basically it was non-responsive.

So, I hit the power off button and it shut itself down normally.

Once it was shut down I hit the power button again to reboot but nothing happened. The screen didn't come on and I noticed the hard drive light didn't come on either. The fans and CD drive made all the typical noises of a startup but that is pretty much it.

I have tried many times to just try and turn it on in the hope that something makes it work, but that method isnt really cutting the mustard.

I am very suprised this has happened. The laptop has been super reliable for the last two years and this is totally out of the blue.

My imediate thoughts are that something physical has happened to the hard drive which stops it from starting and without the hard drive the screen isnt being told to switch itself on. This is total speculation and I cant be at all sure because I am pretty much clueless at PC trouble shooting.

Any advice would be appriecated. I am not really sure what to do. Is there anything I can do without taking it to a repair shop? Any thoughts to the cause?

Thanks guys.

[Carbon]

If it was the hard drive you would get a signal on the screen.

[gra]

Yeah, but if the screen was the problem, wouldn't the hard drive still go through the motions of a startup? wouldn't things still be responsive?

The screen worked perfectly and then just like that it stops? I just cant understand where the failure has occurred. It cant be a duel failure of both screen and hard drive at the same time, can it?

Hard drive does nothing. What do you think?

[Carbon]

Well if there was a processor or motherboard failure it would not only not display a picture but the hard drive would never be accessed as it would never get past POST.

[gra]

Ah, ok. So do you think that type of cpu or motherboard fault sounds consistent with the initial screen freeze I experienced?

[Carbon]

I dunno, I'm not a laptop expert or I would have straight out said that, but it seems consistent. With laptops though if something's wrong and you're out of warranty it's hardly ever cost effective to mess with it over just buying a new one. I'm not saying it couldn't be anything else but it certainly sounds like that sort of failure.

[gra]

Ok, thanks for the advice. It is a pretty high end system so I will try and get it repaired I think. I shall call the local repair guy and see what they say. I hope it isnt stupid expensive because I am really broke at the moment.

[Haun]

try to hook it up to an old moniter you have. if just the screen is broken you will be able to use the moniter to see whats up with the comp

[Carbon]

And that's not the case...