Did my hard drive die? Or was it the fan? How can I recover/fix either way?

Question

I was using my HP Pavillion laptop. All of a suddent the screen starting looking fuzzy and it was frozen. I immediately turned the power off and then tried to turn the laptop back on. Now the screen doesn't work at all. The lights on the laptop are working, they light up when I power on. However the hard drive status indicator only turns on for a few seconds and you hear the fan but after that nothing. If I just leave it 'powered on' I can hear the hard drive (I think it's the hard drive) but nothing is on the screen. Is there a way to repair this and if so how do I determine how to do that without paying a lot of money?

Answer 1

If the hard drive was the issue, you would most likely not see a black screen upon boot - the computer does a few things before it pokes the hard drive for information.

Some possibilities:

• Fried graphics card. This will either likely be a free repair if you're under warranty, or you'll have to pay to have it replaced.
• Broken screen - pay to have it replaced
• The cable connecting the screen to the MOBO somehow got loosened - either reattach it yourself, or pay to have it fixed.

Does your model laptop have some form of graphics out port, like a VGA port that you could hook up an external monitor too, just to see if you see anything on that screen? This will show you if it's an issue with the graphics card as opposed to the screen.

Otherwise, I'd recommend bringing it in to a shop for service, or claim on your warranty.