No display on laptop

jsmoke · 26 Nov 2021 at 20:26

Been asked to look at a laptop compaq CQ61. It has no display, I've connected it via vga cable to my monitor and nothing. The fans spin and light come on, also 2 of the led lights blink about every 1 or 2 seconds but no display.

I could try a different stick of ram tomorrow other than that I assume it's a faulty mobo?

mickyflinn · 26 Nov 2021 at 22:28

Try conecting it to a monitor.

jsmoke · 26 Nov 2021 at 22:38

mickyflinn said:
Try conecting it to a monitor.

I said I tried that and nothing.

mickyflinn · 26 Nov 2021 at 22:45

jsmoke said:
I said I tried that and nothing.

Sorry tired, looks like the onboard gpu is faulty.

Purgatory · 27 Nov 2021 at 12:06

jsmoke said:
Been asked to look at a laptop compaq CQ61. It has no display, I've connected it via vga cable to my monitor and nothing. The fans spin and light come on, also 2 of the led lights blink about every 1 or 2 seconds but no display.

I could try a different stick of ram tomorrow other than that I assume it's a faulty mobo?

It's a junk laptop, you can buy them on ebay starting from £10, if there is any data on it then stick the drive in a usb caddy copy the data they need and pull the ram,cpu,psu and drive and rest in the bin. They are worthless and known for their issues like no video or suddenly they never power up again. Cheaper to buy another one than waste time on trying to repair it.

Alan McFall · 27 Nov 2021 at 18:04

Probably a silly question, but did you use the Function key shortcut to switch to external display (i.e Fn + F7) ?

jsmoke · 27 Nov 2021 at 18:07

Alan McFall said:
Probably a silly question, but did you use the Function key shortcut to switch to external display (i.e Fn + F7) ?

Yep I tried that.

jsmoke · 27 Nov 2021 at 18:09

Purgatory said:
It's a junk laptop, you can buy them on ebay starting from £10, if there is any data on it then stick the drive in a usb caddy copy the data they need and pull the ram,cpu,psu and drive and rest in the bin. They are worthless and known for their issues like no video or suddenly they never power up again. Cheaper to buy another one than waste time on trying to repair it.

It's a friend of my mother's laptop, they want the data but wouldn't mind the laptop fixed as well. Also I can't see this laptop on ebay for £10, maybe some "for parts" at £30.

IceBear · 27 Nov 2021 at 18:24

Buy a working one from ebay and swap the drives over ?

jsmoke · 27 Nov 2021 at 18:32

IceBear said:
Buy a working one from ebay and swap the drives over ?

Don't want any expense as old laptop. I'll try a different stick of ram when I can get hold of one.

mickyflinn · 27 Nov 2021 at 18:56

jsmoke said:
It's a friend of my mother's laptop, they want the data but wouldn't mind the laptop fixed as well. Also I can't see this laptop on ebay for £10, maybe some "for parts" at £30.

Take the sata hard drive out and connect it to a pc to retrieve the data.

Alan McFall · 27 Nov 2021 at 19:03

Have you tried resetting BIOS (CMOS battery) ?

Worth a shot, appears to be nice and easy. Is it possible someone's been messing in the BIOS and it's not resetting to default after failing to boot ? Bad RAM timings, CPU clocks etc can cause no BIOS boot.