Hard drive or graphics?

ennogs · 17 Nov 2009 at 19:30

A friend of my mothers has given me a laptop to look at. It switches on but I cannot even get into the bios due to the screen. Would you say it is hard drive issue or a graphics issue?

The screen shows a thick black line in the middle and on either side of the thick black line are very thin lines in different colours.

Apologies for poor picture. I only had an old webcam to take the shot.

PC world kindly told my mothers friend she just needs to reinstall the OS with the discs that came with the laptop lol. Out of curtesy i did put the recovery disc in. Naturally it didn't work due to me being unable to see anything on the screen.

doggs · 17 Nov 2009 at 19:37

Looks like the the screen has died. Plug it in to an external monitor and see what happens.

rhysduck · 17 Nov 2009 at 19:38

doggs said:
Looks like the the screen has died. Plug it in to an external monitor and see what happens.

+1.

If its the same, its the graphic card. Take the hard drive out.. The laptop should still POST without a HDD in.

If it's the same, then you can rule the HDD out.

manbearpig · 17 Nov 2009 at 19:42

yeah, it looks like the screen is dead

ennogs · 17 Nov 2009 at 19:47

Thanks for the replies. I just plugged my monitor into the side of the laptop. On the laptop I still get the same screen and on my monitor I get a message saying no signal input.

I don't really want to start opening the case as it is still under warrenty.

So would you now say it is the graphics at fault?

danb21t · 17 Nov 2009 at 19:54

sure looks like a mainboard/graphics problem, so back to the shop it goes!

if you need to save work/data take the hard drive out and hook it up to your PC

ennogs · 17 Nov 2009 at 19:59

Thanks

rhysduck · 17 Nov 2009 at 20:06

ennogs said:
So would you now say it is the graphics at fault?

Yes

As said, most definitely a graphics / mainboard (as the gfx is likely to be integrated into the mainboard) problem.

doggs · 17 Nov 2009 at 20:06

You may need to press a couple of keys on the keyboard to get it to display on an external monitor. Usually Function (Fn) + F5.

droyden · 17 Nov 2009 at 20:31

If the screen is closed then you normally dont need to press any buttons but its well worth checking to make sure. either way its a warranty fix. I would also make an image of the hard drive just incase they wipe it

manbearpig · 17 Nov 2009 at 22:53

doggs said:
You may need to press a couple of keys on the keyboard to get it to display on an external monitor. Usually Function (Fn) + F5.

yeah, i would try doing that, it could work