Black screen when OS starts

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Lightheart

Lightheart

PCHF Member
Oct 10, 2020
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I'm stumped by the weirdest problem with my HP Envy M6 laptop.

Three days ago, I opened the laptop after it had been asleep for around twenty hours. I was able to use it for about ten minutes, at which point the screen went black. The laptop sounded like it was still on. I rebooted it, saw the HP logo, then where the Windows logo was supposed to show up, it went black again. Again, it sounded like it kept working. No cursor, either, or gray like there's still backlight, just complete blackness like the screen is off.

From there, I tried a lot. I can see the bios just fine. I can enter windows recovery options. Reverting updates was possible, but made no difference. Neither did a factory reset. Even booting into Safe Mode led to a black screen.

I have since formatted the hard drive and installed a fresh copy of Windows several times. It goes through the installation process perfectly, I can play around with the settings a little bit, but somewhere between five and ten minutes into using the new OS, the screen goes black again.

Wondering whether the problem is Windows, I tried to install Cloud Ready OS, but that went black at the start of the installation process, right after the logo loads.

At this point, I'm completely stumped. It doesn't appear to be a hardware thing, because the screen works perfectly fine under a lot of circumstances. It doesn't seem to be a graphics driver problem, because Safe Mode doesn't work either. I have no clue what's going on, and it feels like a fixable problem, but I can't figure it out and I'm not finding anything on the internet.

Does anyone have any ideas or familiarity with similar issues?
 
Hello

Have you done any firmware updates from the HP site? This seems to be an issue after the laptop get's some age on it.. If none of these work it may be a hardware issue..


Edit: You could try this as well...

1: Hard reset your laptop
  1. Turn off your laptop.
  2. Remove the power, hard drives, the battery and any attached peripheral devices.
  3. Press and hold the power button for 60 seconds and release.
  4. Put your battery in and plug the charger. Then don't plug anything else.
  5. Boot your laptop again to see if it works now.
 
it completely sounds like a hardware problem to me. :)
you have formatted the drive and reloaded Windows, removing any software related possibilities.
also, Safe Mode only stops some software and drivers from starting, hardware is still in play albiet inaccessible without its driver.
this further indicates to me that hardware is your issue.

if you aren't looking at overheating then the next guess is something has gone pear shaped - hard drive, LCD panel, screen data ribbon through the hinge joint, memory, motherboard etc.

what age is that M6 now, 8 years?
and when does 'the screen work perfedctly fine under a lot of circumstances' - sounds like it only works for 5-10 minutes.
 
Thanks for the responses. I guess the "perfectly fine" refers to the fact that it has no problems for the hour or so it takes to install Windows.
 
if it was mine, I'd be thinking I've had my money's worth out of it, lets not invest too many resources getting it working.
but... if there are sentimental or budgetary concerns, I'd then be looking at upgrading to a SSD and reloading Windows onto that.
the current hard drive can be put into a $20 external USB enclosure and used to initially recover your files then going forward, as a backup medium.

of course the gamble there is that your current problems are hard drive related, and based purely on the age and the fact they are the number one issue with old mobile laptops, you should have a good chance of a successful outcome, but.... it is only a guess. and again, based on the age, is it worth the investment of time and money?

so during the time it takes to reload windows, it is fine. when after installing Windows does the laptop start misbehaving again?
at the next reboot? after Windows activation or updates? after you install drivers? or a certain program?
 
Yeah, it's served me well for over six years and if I had the funds, I'd replace it. I'm hoping I can still get a bit more time out of it, but it's seeming more and more likely that I won't.

It's got a 500GB SSD that's about a year old now. It's also got 16GB RAM, a new battery, and I had to replace the screen on it a few years ago.

It allows me to install windows each time I try. I get through the entire process, which takes about an hour, including all the settings and such at the end. Then five to ten minutes in, the screen goes black. That's the part that makes me hope it's a software issue.
 
after you do all the reinstall of Windows, don't do anything else, in fact, also keep it off the net so it doesn't auto-update drivers and such.
keep it at the pristine fresh state for a day or so, do some reboots, play with the embedded software; WordPad, Solitaire, etc.
if it still plays up with nothing extra loaded, it's got to be hardware.
once happy, start loading one program at a time, say Office first, then reboot several times, play with Word, Excel for a day and see how that goes.
then try your AV software or Photoshop or whatever else you normally have been installing.
I'd still be trying to keep it off the web for as long as possible.
you want to keep it simple, adding one change at a time.
after you have all your usual bunch of software loaded, see how that goes - if it's software related, it should have fallen over by now.
then put in on the web, activate it and let the downloads commence - then see how it fairs.
if it starts misbehaving at this step then it is a driver issue with some component.
 
Oddly, I hadn't considered not connecting to the internet. Which was great advice, thank you! My laptop is still working. I have chosen to, instead of installing stuff, first disable automatically installing drivers and have since been able to connect to the internet as well. Next step is downloading drivers one by one.

My current hypothesis is that things may go wrong with one of those, most likely graphics. If it does, would that indicate a problem with the driver itself, or a problem with the hardware? Or, I guess it could be either?
 
yeah sadly it could be either.
the card will work without its specific driver as Windows will use its own native driver for graphics.
which may be better or worse than the official latest from the GPU manufacturer.

what driver Windows Updates uses is the tried and tested, certified version by Microsoft, so while it may be a few versions behind, it is the one that's suppose to be guaranteed 'error free' - and I do say supposed to be.

but I've had similar issues with the official, company released versions as well, the latest is not always the greatest.
I do recall a time when I had to rollback a graphics card driver to 3 versions in the past until the system was stable.
 
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