Today my HP laptop suddenly started having the black screen issue: When booting up, after the Windows logo and the "Starting Windows" message, the screen just goes black. I know Windows keeps going because the startup sounds can be heard. Booting into Safe Mode worked and disabling the display drivers let me boot into regular Windows, though in low resolution. However, when going into Device Manager (not in Safe Mode), the DVD drive, the network adapters and a whole lot of WAN miniports have the yellow icon indicating they don't work.
I have a suspicion it's a hardware problem, because yesterday I was trying to plug in the computer to the wall and the plug wasn't working well, so as I was trying to adjust it, the power kept coming and going, so something may have been fried inside. How can I check whether this is true?
I tried using System Restore, but it appears to be turned off, so no backups are available. I could reinstall Windows (though I'm trying to avoid it), but if there's a hardware problem there's no point, is there?
chkdsk /r
on it. I did that, and it said it was OK.