HP G71 black screen upon boot, sometimes hangs

[Alien Guardian]

Hello, all.

I have a 2010 HP G71 Notebook, running Windows 7 Home Edition 64-bit
Lately upon startup, it would go to a silent black screen for a few minutes before loading into Windows.
Today, it's started hanging at that black screen.
It also hangs when I boot into repair mode, or a previous working setting.

I've been able to boot into Safe Mode and ran sfc/scannow, and came back with no problems.
The only way I've been able to get to my normal desktop is to do this, then restart and boot into debug mode.

Any ideas?

Other specs:

BIOS: Default
Processor: Intel Core2 Duo CPU
Memory: 4096MB RAM

[hartbeatmr]

Good evening Alien Guardian and welcome to CH

When you say it is just hangs during safemode or on a normal boot how long are you talking about?

You sure the screen is black or can you faintly see some images?

When the screen is black do you hear any of the normal window boot sounds?

Do you have any devices besides the AC charger plugged in? no USB drives / thumb drives?

Have you see or gotten any BSOD ( blue screen of death) or any error messages?

Hope to hear from you soon, Mike 

[Alien Guardian]

Hi, thanks for the prompt reply.

The black screen hangs indefinitely during a normal boot, now.

The screen is just a glowing black.

I can hear a faint high-pitched whirr, which is what I normally hear. I initially hear my disks running, but they stop when the black screen comes on.

My laptop runs on AC. No external drives are connected.

I've had no screens or messages of the sort.

[hartbeatmr]

Good evening Alien Guardian

Thank you for the info

Have you ever cleaned out the heat sink / fan it maybe choking for air and shutting down.

You can use a paper clip or a tooth pick to hold the fan still while you use the cans of air just do not let the fan free spin. Just blow the air from the bottom out to the back vents and then when clean reverse going from the exhaust port into the fan.     

Hope to hear from you, Mike

[Alien Guardian]

Hello,

I did try blowing them out with canned air this morning, but to no avail.

I did just find that I had an SD card from my camera lodged pretty far into the slot (I had to pry it out). It may have gotten shoved into there by being put down wrong, but I doubt it has anything to do with the problem.

[hartbeatmr]

Hello again

Yes they can stop it from starting the G71 have a multi boot options this includes usb floppy, usb disc's, network booting etc. If the card is bad and stuck in slot it very well may stop it from booting

I would try to get it out. Mike

To eject the card it should push in and un-click then you should be able to take it out.

[Alien Guardian]

I've been able to boot this desktop before with the SD card in the slot, though.

[hartbeatmr]

Hello again

OK well then it is possible that you may have some thing else like a bad stick of memory you can test it.

When you laptop doesn't boot do you see any lights flashing on and off. One would be by the top right of the keyboard and one on the far left of the keyboard.

Also what CPU do you have a AMD or Intel sometimes there is a sticker on the right palm rest, unless you know from memory

To download and test your memory http://www.memtest86.com/ because if it is freezing even in safe mode there may be a hardware issue. Just download memtest and burn it to an ISO.   download memtest (http://memtest.org/). Burn it to a cd using a dedicated .iso burning utility (http://www.petri.co.il/how_to_write_iso_files_to_cd.htm), make sure the cd drive is at the top of the boot order in bios, then boot to the newly created cd and run the utility.

[Alien Guardian]

If you're referring to the number and caps lock, then yes, they do flash.


I have an Intel CPU.

[hartbeatmr]

Oh boy that is not good

That usually means the video chip solder on the MoBo is bad or the solder balls are not making contact. This can come from over heating in most cases.

[Alien Guardian]

Oh, well, fantastic.
Would the laptop work at all if this is the case?

[hartbeatmr]

Considering your CPU is a Intel CPU you can try one other thing

Before I get into that those lights when they flash like that it means no video signal and considering you have a G71 it may also be telling you that the LED / LCD panel is bad and not the MoBo.

To test this leave the laptop off and you can plug in another monitor into the side of the laptop and turn it on if it works than you just need a LCD replacement if it doesn't that means you would need a MoBo

Hope this works for you, Mike

[Alien Guardian]

I'll have to try that one out tomorrow.

Thanks for the help thus far, and I'll be sure to let you know.

[hartbeatmr]

No Problem

I really hope it works for you Mike