HP Pavilion dv4, display seems dead

[horseatingweeds]

I've got an HP Pavilion dv4 I'm fixing for someone. They say the display suddenly stopped working. I've tried the obvious stuff, like turning up the brightness, and changing the display settings in Windows 7. So it does seem to be dead.

However, I can't seem to get a signal to a regular monitor with the HDMI. The regular VGA port works fine in using a monitor as the display though.

So I'm wondering if the problem might be in the graphics card. Does anyone know how laptops work in this way? If the display uses the HDMI, and the HDMI isn't working, couldn't that be the problem, and the monitor is fine?

I have no idea. I'm tempted to replace the display but would like to narrow it down a little further as the problem. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[mightymaxio]

Could be a loose connection from the graphics card to the monitor, open up the laptop and make sure that the cable is in all the way, it may be hard to get too but necessary to check to see if its a connection problem. Otherwise it could be the monitor failing, which usually doesn't happen that often.

 

[horseatingweeds]

Perhaps I should take it apart far enough to check the connections before I order a new display then.

Are there any diagnostic implications for the HDMI not working?
Could a virus or other malicious program interfere with the display?