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As it says opened lid waited, 3 hours later screen still black lots of sounds going on.
I have tried to switch machine off it won't switch off.
any ideas thank you

Hold the power button down for ~5 seconds. It'll force the laptop to switch off.

Does the black screen appear straight away, or is there a 'BIOS' screen first? BIOS screens generally have the manufacturer's logo on.

start up machine
if you press Ctr+Alt+Del.
After that click on "Start Task Manager".
go to the Application bar and click on "New Task" and write down C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe
This text bassicaly starts Internet Explorer and after a few seconds of waiting wallpaper should show up and Windows should work.
worth a try and good luck.

After 3hrs
Pull the power lead.
Pull out the battery.

Wait a minute or so.

Put the power lead back in for now only. And then press the power button. Hopefully it should start up.

You may be presented with a menu.
Just hit enter and let it do what's best.

Let us know how you get on.

Thanks Mark that got it back up and running putting it in for a service.

If it only happened the once then its fine, a service isn't going to really sort anything out.

It can happen any time, its windows just being a pain as normal.

With computers,
you will be told it can be this or that, but until it dies you cants say for sure what's gone. There are a few components to your screen. Wait for it to go pop then you will know which bit needs fixing.


my pc does that black screen thing every 3 months, but i know its windows playing funny games. Buy removing all the power you have given it a bit of a reset.

The way to determine what the issue is here is to boot into "safe mode". Holding down the power button for 6 seconds creates a "brown out" which is a safer way to turn your PC/laptop off without damaging the hard drive.

Reboot and keep pressing the F8 key until a menu appears. Use the cursor keys to select Safe Mode VGA Mode then press enter.

This will boot your laptop with the usual drivers but without the display driver. So if your laptop now works fine then you have a display driver issue which can usually be sorted out by just downloading the latest version.

If it STILL goes black then it's probably your FL Inverter or Graphics controller chip and the only way to determine this really is to plug an external monitor in. If the monitor stays on when the laptop has gone black then it's the FL Inverter and it's an easy enough job to replace it. If both screens go black then it's the chip and you need to get the pro's involved.

Let me know if you need anymore help.

Cheers
Graham