Laptop "Black Screen of Death" help
 

Buddy of mine had a HP dv2700 that he apparently bought a year or two ago. He's the type that when something breaks he just buys a new one. So he said I could have it and if I get it working great. I ordered a power cord through ebay, it just came today, and when I plugged it in and booted it up an error message popped up. It said something about log in failure or something, it hasn't popped up in the ten or so times since. But the constant is that it boots up to a black screen with a mouse cursor. The cursor can be moved but nothing else happens. Ctrl-alt-delete doesn't bring up anything either.

The same thing happens if I boot into safe mode.


Any ideas? Is a fresh install of Vista probably the only option? Would like to avoid that as I don't have a copy.

sounds like a driver issue. Let it sit for a while to see if it ever does get to a login screen. I had this with a Vista install I used to have. It would take 5-10 minutes for the login screen to pop up from that black screen with the cursor.

A reformat/reinstall is always a good option, if you can track down a copy.

Potentially stupid question. But I'm sure I can find a friend that has a vista disc for their pc. Are the discs themselves encoded with a product key or will a good product key work with any disc? The bottom of the laptop has the Vista tag on it with a product key.

dola, it's been sitting since I posted the thread. Still nothing.

When booting it shows the windows screen with a loading bar at the bottom and then the black screen of death follows it.

Yeah, you can use the product code from the tag on the bottom with any Vista install CD.

Well, something did happen, the screen saver came up :p

Yeah, sounds like there is definitely some driver that is not loading/taking a long time to time-out. If there isn't anything on it you need to save, then a reformat and reinstall should get you going.

Borrowed a buddies disc for Windows Vista that he had for his Dell. It installed fine, and once I installed I entered the key on the bottom of my laptop. Is accepted. Only odd thing is under System Settings in the control panel it says my manufacturer is Dell. Its an HP laptop. Is that just because the installation disc is for a dell laptop? Will I run into any issues? It runs fine so far.


So, to recap for those who are kind enough to help.

1.) Will the Dell Windows installation disc cause any problems or is that just a label

2.) I just received the laptop. Like I said, I had to order a power cord for it. I have no driver discs. Nothing. Fresh install, what should I do now? I can find the Anti-Virus on my own but the drivers and basic essentials that I would just use a disc for I am drawing blanks.



Damn, 4 years ago I considered myself computer savy. Since then I haven't had the money for anything PC related so I got out of touch and I swear I have regressed into a tech tard.

You can get the driver discs from the HP website. On their Drivers and Downloads page, you enter the model number and it brings everything up for you.

The Dell name is just a label from the install. It won't affect anything.

dola, I was kind of hoping this laptop would be able to run FM. I did the canyourunit site and it passed all but the video card. This has the " Standard VGA Graphics Adapter" :(

That might change if there is a special graphics adapter available from the HP site.

I'd imagine that if it was just the video card, at worst, you could play with just the 2D mode...?

Great. We'll just have to see how it goes.

Appreciate the help gents.

1. No, it's just branded with "Dell" since is was a disk provided by the OEM.

2. Check device manager and go to hp.com and then bring up the drivers for that pc and install them. Start with the chipset drivers first!

I just shit my pants with excitement. After driver updates the canyourunit site says i pass with flying colors.

Cant beat free eh

Listen VERY carefully. Do NOT put VISTA on your machine. Vista is a virus that will destroy your computer.

When your computer boots up hit the delete key several times (or it may be one of the F (function ) keys.
The intro splash screen will tell you. Just keep hitting that key. That will take you to the CMOS screen. This tells the computer how to boot up and what order to do things in.

It sounds like your hard drive might be bad. Or maybe your hard drive is not correctly plugged in. If you open up the hard drive compartment underneath, make sure it hasn't slipped out. Otherwise, make sure in the cmos that your hard drive is in line to boot. You can run an operating system FROM the CDROM and get the opsys to boot sometimes or else run a restore program. THen again I've never seen this really work.


The best thing I think is a brand new operating system install. See if you can get a copy of XP HOme. That is all you need. Great system.

Oh looks like you have had some success yay! yeah drivers are a pain. YOu can get a bunch of em from the site of the manufacturer of whatever it is. If you have trouble seeing things you can hook up a monitor to the laptop and view things that way to see if it is ONLY the LCD that is screwed but it may not like both.

Yeah, everything seems to be running fine right now. Have heard some bad things over the past couple of years with vista but we'll see what happens. Maybe here in a month or so I'll check out 7 or go back to XP.

One odd thing I came across while doing some google research earlier when I was having the trouble is that with this laptop its a pain, if not impossible, to go back to XP. I didn't read too much into it I just saw it real quick. Don't know if it is an HP thing or if this series of laptop.

Do yourself a favor and check out Windows 7. I was not unhappy with Vista until I got Windows 7. I had no idea what I was missing.