Thought laptop was dead

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My 6 yr old HP laptop would not display anything on it's screen after a reboot. Sounded like it was booting OK from short access sounds from CD drive. SSD main drive. Fan was on.

Decided to plug in an external monitor via HDMI and nothing displayed on external monitor but normal Windows screen now appeared on laptop screen.

I had not had an external monitor attached in years.

So I am perplexed.

Many new laptops do not come with a CD drive. This one has one. I prefer to buy music CDs and import to Google music rather than download.
 
You can get a good USB external CD drive.

I hate the stupid industry for trying to eliminate the CD drive, CD/DVD drives will always be around, since we got them archival DVD's that will be around for a hundred years.
 
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It's been a few years since I was in end-user support but mostly had HP laptops/desktops in service. I recall having a keyboard combination to toggle displays. Something like "Fn" key and "F6"(or F4, something). Look at the symbols on a few of the Function keys and you may notice a monitor looking icon. Also since you now have a display check the display settings in your Operating system especially resolution.

Now if this was just a reason to buy a new laptop, then...........never mind.
smile.gif
 
Go into BIOS, and change boot order to the main drive, and then see what happens. Probably CD drive is first in boot order.
 
Originally Posted By: BigD1
Go into BIOS, and change boot order to the main drive, and then see what happens. Probably CD drive is first in boot order.


Hard to change the boot order when you cannot see the screen. And the fix was plugging in external monitor. Or trying to.
 
Originally Posted By: Rick505
It's been a few years since I was in end-user support but mostly had HP laptops/desktops in service. I recall having a keyboard combination to toggle displays. Something like "Fn" key and "F6"(or F4, something). Look at the symbols on a few of the Function keys and you may notice a monitor looking icon. Also since you now have a display check the display settings in your Operating system especially resolution.

Now if this was just a reason to buy a new laptop, then...........never mind.
smile.gif



I would like a new laptop. But I am thinking newer boat first. I have a backup laptop and a work laptop.
 
Originally Posted By: Rick505
It's been a few years since I was in end-user support but mostly had HP laptops/desktops in service. I recall having a keyboard combination to toggle displays. Something like "Fn" key and "F6"(or F4, something). Look at the symbols on a few of the Function keys and you may notice a monitor looking icon. Also since you now have a display check the display settings in your Operating system especially resolution.

Now if this was just a reason to buy a new laptop, then...........never mind.
smile.gif



I thought the laptop screen would always display if Windows found it was the only connected display, regardless of buttons pressed.
 
My experience is the display's back lite went out. Look at the screen from the side under a bright light. Do you see all the graphics displayed on the dark background? If so it is the white back lite went out.
 
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