Computer reboot and black screen

[staceylew79]

I'm hoping I'm posting in the right place. I am new to this forum.

A few days ago I turned on my HP Pavillion dv6449us laptop, and all the lights on the keyboard, and the power light came on, but I had a black screen (the monitor never came on).

I played around with a little bit and found that if I hit F8 when I pressed the power button it would let me start up in safe mode (sometimes). I talked to HP (which weren't much help because my warranty ran out 2 months ago on a 14 month old computer!!!!) He did help me get into my Bios (which I could have done myself)

I eventually got the computer to boot up without hitting the F8 button but my screen was messed up. You could see Windows Vista starting up but there were about a million lines crossing the screen (which led me to believe there was something wrong with my video card). I started back up in F8 mode and uninstalled my NVidia graphics card and restarted so it installed the standard VGA driver. (I found this as a solution online).

I started up the computer and again got the black screen but the LED's lit up. I noticed that my hard drive only blinked twice before nothing else happened. After a few seconds the computer rebooted itself. This was continual. I just let it continue to reboot (wanting to see if anything would happen) and it eventually started up on it's own.

If I restart the computer (after I got in ok once) I was back to the black screen.

I have reseated the memory, hard drive and video card and put them back in. I took out the battery and unplugged the cable and drained the internal power. I plugged it back in, with no luck. I have reformatted, leaving me to believe this is not a software problem.

I'm out of options, but I really don't want to pay a lot to get it fixed, but I also don't want to buy another computer, I just bought it 14 months ago.

A little info about the computer:

HP Pavillion dv6449us (AMD Turion 64x2)
Windows Vista Home Premium
2 GB Ram
Nvidia GeForce6150

Thanks in advance for the help. I hope someone can help me fix this...

Stacey

[patio]

Try that monitor on another machine to rule it out as the culprit...
Other than that you may have a corrupt XP install or a hard drive issue  but for now try that first.

[staceylew79]

Sorry I forgot to mention that another monitor didn't work. I'm on now, but only in safe mode with network support. Sometimes I can't even get into that.

I did a reformat from a Windows Vista disk that I ordered from HP and that has worked before, but now I'm running into problems. I'm not sure where else to go from here...


Thanks for your suggestions and help!

[patio]

When you did the Vista re-install did you remember to re-install the Motherboard drivers ? ?
Find out what brand HDD is in there and DLoad the FREE diagnostics from the drive manuf. site...
Use that file to create a bootable diagnostic CD following the directions from the site.
Power down and re-boot with the CD and run the long test on the hard drive...
This will tell us if it's the issue...
If not we'll move on to the next thing.

BTW Welcome to Computer hope ! !

[staceylew79]

The disk from HP contains all of the drivers for the computer and also the Vista reinstall. But the HDD is a Toshiba Hard drive.

I will check out the toshiba site and see if I can find anything there. Thanks

[patio]

Gotcha...i missed that !
Toshiba may not have a HDD diagnostics program...if they don't we'll try the next best thing ...
Go to Start/Run and type in chkdsk /r and hit Enter...let it run to completion.
It's best to turn off any programs running in the tray beforehand...if some of these are protection programs then simply disconnect your network cable.

[staceylew79]

I tried that last night and it didn't give me any error messages. Just as I suspected, Toshiba page was pretty useless finding information on diagnostic testing.

[patio]

So an external monitor will not run on this laptop ? ?
Are ther any driver updates for the video on that machine ?
Was it dropped recently ?

[staceylew79]

No an external monitor does not work. Video drivers were updated yesterday, but if I start Vista normally that's when I get the lines across the screen. If I can get it to start up either normally or in safe mode everything is fine...
but with the Nvidia drivers I get the lines. If I use the Standard VGA driver I can get into Windows without the distorted screen.

I think I've narrowed it down to the video card and/or the hard drive.

[patio]

OK now it's making more sense since i'm thoroughly confused...but that's a good thing.
From what you say the video is fine using the native Vista Windows drivers but you have issues when running the nVidia drivers ...correct ?

The reason that is good news is this is most likely a driver issue and not a hardware issue...
DLoad and install Everest Home from majorgeeks.
Run a Report and save it to a text file.
Copy and paste the Computer Summary portion here and i'll have a looksee...

[staceylew79]

Computer: 
   Operating System   Microsoft Windows Vista Home Edition 
   OS Service Pack   - 
   DirectX   4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0c) 
   Computer Name   STACEY-PC 
   User Name   Stacey 
   
  Motherboard: 
   CPU Type   Mobile , 1800 MHz 
   Motherboard Name   Hewlett-Packard HP Pavilion dv6000   
   Motherboard Chipset   Unknown 
   System Memory   1984 MB 
   BIOS Type   Phoenix (08/01/08) 
   
  Display: 
   Video Adapter   GeForce Go 6150 
   Video Adapter   GeForce Go 6150 
   3D Accelerator   nVIDIA C51 
   Monitor   Generic PnP Monitor [NoDB] 
   
  Multimedia: 
   Audio Adapter   High Definition Audio Controller [NoDB] 
   
  Storage: 
   IDE Controller   NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller 
   IDE Controller   Ricoh Memory Stick Controller 
   IDE Controller   Ricoh MMC Host Controller 
   IDE Controller   Ricoh xD-Picture Card Controller 
   IDE Controller   Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller 
   SCSI/RAID Controller   Microsoft iSCSI Initiator 
   Disk Drive   TOSHIBA MK1637GSX SCSI Disk Device (149 GB) 
   Optical Drive   TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-L632M ATA Device 
   SMART Hard Disks Status   Unknown 
   
  Partitions: 
   C: (NTFS)   152626 MB (116603 MB free) 
   
  Input: 
   Keyboard   HID Keyboard Device 
   Keyboard   Standard PS/2 Keyboard 
   Mouse   Synaptics PS/2 Port TouchPad 
   
  Network: 
   Network Adapter   Broadcom 4321AG 802.11a/b/g/draft-n Wi-Fi Adapter   
   Network Adapter   NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller 
   Modem   HDAUDIO Soft Data Fax Modem with SmartCP 
   
  Peripherals: 
   Printer   Microsoft XPS Document Writer 
   Printer   Send To OneNote 2007 
   USB1 Controller   Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller [NoDB] 
   USB2 Controller   Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller [NoDB] 
   USB Device   HP Pavilion Webcam 
   USB Device   USB Composite Device 
   Battery   Microsoft AC Adapter 
   Battery   Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery

[patio]

I'm convinced by your posts and the google searches that this is indeed a driver issue...
You're not the first to have issues with that video chip.
Try another driver and/or revert back to the original driver that shipped with the laptop.

[staceylew79]

Well I've reverted back to the standard vga because everytime the Nvidia gets installed, I have problems. I still have the start up problem though, which has me really puzzled.

The latest thing is, if the computer sits off for long periods of time it will start up right away, but otherwise it's hard to get the computer to boot up. I'm going to see if I can borrow a hard drive from someone and rule that out...although I have a sneaking suspicion that's what it is. And something temp related if it's ok for a cool start.

Thanks for your help.

[phoenix011]

Hi staceylew79. I had about 2-3 years an NVidia graphic card which had the same problem. Using original VGA drivers from Windows XP worked fine, after installing NVidia drivers the computer freez.
In nutshell, the graphic card was damaged. Replacing the graphic card solved the problem. It was a hardware faiulre.

[patio]

Hi staceylew79. I had about 2-3 years an NVidia graphic card which had the same problem. Using original VGA drivers from Windows XP worked fine, after installing NVidia drivers the computer freez.
In nutshell, the graphic card was damaged. Replacing the graphic card solved the problem. It was a hardware faiulre.

It's a laptop.......