Toshiba Black screen of death

[1957Buck]

Hi, I have black screen of death on my laptop.
No curser, nothing!
Fan runs, can play dvd in media centre so monitor good, cannot safe boot. and wont accept recovery disc, help please.
Have tried reconnect cmos battery, no good.

 

[Monsterminty]

what do you mean can play a dvd in media centre?

 

[Ricardus]

Hi, I have black screen of death on my laptop.
No curser, nothing!
Fan runs, can play dvd in media centre so monitor good, cannot safe boot. and wont accept recovery disc, help please.
Have tried reconnect cmos battery, no good.

I have an old Tosh laptop with a similar issue. When an external monitor has been plugged in, even if it's turned off or unplugged, it sometimes gets confused about where it should be sending a video signal. You might have the same issue and if so you can try manually changing the display priority via the keyboard.

Have a look at the keyboard, probably the F1-F12 keys, and see if there's a pictogram looking like a monitor in superscript. If you do you ought to have another key (often Fn) which does the same function for the F keys as Shift or Ctrl does for others.

 

[1957Buck]

what do you mean can play a dvd in media centre?

Hi, yes you can start media centre without fully starting laptop and it will play a film no problem, it just wont start up and go to windows xp, all other little lights work such as caps lock, num lock etc.

 

[1957Buck]

Hi, I have black screen of death on my laptop.
No curser, nothing!
Fan runs, can play dvd in media centre so monitor good, cannot safe boot. and wont accept recovery disc, help please.
Have tried reconnect cmos battery, no good.

I have an old Tosh laptop with a similar issue. When an external monitor has been plugged in, even if it's turned off or unplugged, it sometimes gets confused about where it should be sending a video signal. You might have the same issue and if so you can try manually changing the display priority via the keyboard.

Have a look at the keyboard, probably the F1-F12 keys, and see if there's a pictogram looking like a monitor in superscript. If you do you ought to have another key (often Fn) which does the same function for the F keys as Shift or Ctrl does for others.

Hi, thanks but have done this, it plays the dvd through tv but same black screen trying to start up.

 

[Monsterminty]

i still don't get this, are you putting a dvd in the laptop and it plays through connecting to the tv(i.e you are using the tv as a monitor)? in which case, i'd say the screen on said laptop is dead, has a loose connection etc.

 

[Igorian]

I think it may be an all in one type PC which has Media Centre as a separate bootable "O/S", possible stored on ROM and therfore non corruptible, which allows you to do just media stuff. The issue is when he's booting to the main O/S partition that he has the failure.

 

[Monsterminty]

you think partition collapse or driver corruption or along those lines then?

 

[1957Buck]

i still don't get this, are you putting a dvd in the laptop and it plays through connecting to the tv(i.e you are using the tv as a monitor)? in which case, i'd say the screen on said laptop is dead, has a loose connection etc.

Hi, yes this Toshiba satallite allows playing media without full start up.
It's a long story but this all started when I wanted to go to a restore point but laptop would not let me, tried several restore points, no joy, so tried the disc to take it back to factory settings, no joy, nothing happened, tried safe boot, nothing, it fires up as I said, fan runs, caps lock lights etc even sometimes some music in background, wierd eh?
But yes the dvd/film plays on tv as monitor and laptop monitor.
PS, thank you for your interest.

 

[1957Buck]

I think it may be an all in one type PC which has Media Centre as a separate bootable "O/S", possible stored on ROM and therfore non corruptible, which allows you to do just media stuff. The issue is when he's booting to the main O/S partition that he has the failure.

Hi, yes I think you are on the right lines as to how my pc works.

 

[Igorian]

you think partition collapse or driver corruption or along those lines then?

Or other drive issues. Chkdsk would be my first port of call if installed or if an O/S disk is available.

 

[1957Buck]

you think partition collapse or driver corruption or along those lines then?

Or other drive issues. Chkdsk would be my first port of call if installed or if an O/S disk is available.

Hi, I remembered one other possibly important thing!
When I tried to put in the factory disc to put it back to factory settings (restore disc) it would not do anything (laptop working fine at this point) I was told by someone that if it didnt boot to this disc that I would have to set my BIOS to the dvd drive which I did, I then turned my pc off to restart, this is when I got this Black screen.
I read on one website to take out the cmos battery for a while (overnight) and apparently it sorts this out, but as you've guessed by now it didn't, but worth a try.
Wish I at least had a curser or error or something!