Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of Bruce Corson
Bruce CorsonFlag for United States of America

asked on

Windows 8 HP won't boot

From what my client described, they were poking around in the BIOS and I THINK disabled secure boot...they were trying to reset their password. Now I have their laptop and it will boot from nothing, does not respond to F2, F10 or F12 keys upon startup. All I get is a gray screen.

Help?
Avatar of CompProbSolv
CompProbSolv
Flag of United States of America image

"All I get is a gray screen": you never see anything on the screen other than gray?  No HP logo or anything else?

If this is the case, then you have a hardware issue.
Avatar of Bruce Corson

ASKER

Correct: no boot up logos...the screen has light behind it, but nothing shown. You can hear the disk spinning.

Well, it was working until client messed with BIOS. I can't boot from a Windows 8 disk or USB or TechUSB or System Rescue CD.
You might test with a monitor attached to the external monitor port.

Do you hear the hard drive moving the head around?  When you try to boot from a CD, does it access the CD?  I'm trying to determine here if it is a video problem or something more severe.

Does the system have a CapsLock or NumLock light?  If so, tap the appropriate buttons and see if the lights change state.
Remove the power and battery, then press the power button for approximately 10 seconds. After that insert the battery and the power cord again and try restarting.
@rindi I just tried that, thank you. Didn't work. @CompProbSolv, not video; DVD spins up but nothing happens.

I took it to our local Microsoft store. I hadn't been there before. Anyway, they concluded it is a BIOS password and logic board needs to be replaced.
I can understand that it may be a failed logic board but not how "it is a BIOS password" would keep the system from displaying anything at all.  I'd expect at least a prompt for the password.
i would remove the bios battery also before anything else
but i never saw a system that did not display Anything at all by changing bios settings, so i suppose they did other things to the system - or it just died on them
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Bruce Corson
Bruce Corson
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
I don't know how to close this without giving myself credit for the answer. But in fact this is the answer that worked.
you can give yourself all the credit - you solved it
As explained in my answer, this is the only solution that worked.