Question Laptop black screen on startup

[ash1980]

Hi all,

I have a startup issue with my laptop and I'm hoping I may find some answers here.

When I try to turn my laptop on after it has been shut down or asleep after closing the lid/inactivity, after pressing the power button the screen backlight powers on (but the screen remains black without any activity) and the fan comes on for a few seconds and then turns off. It remains like this without going any further, so I press the power button again to turn it off and retry to turn it on again.
If I repeat this process a number of times, at a random point after pressing the power button for it to turn on I get the bios/motherboard loading screen and the windows loads (even if waking up from sleep mode)!

I have tried googling and trying some solutions but nothing has worked so far.

I have tried taking the battery out, pressing and holding the power button for a minute etc, but hasn't helped.
I rolled back some recent windows updates without any luck.

I have also read it may be a GPU failure and replacing it may help, but I don't have a dedicated GPU, it's simply running from my i7 CPU graphics.

I'm not actually convinced this is a software problem as nothing seems to be loading!
In all my ignorance, I have a hunch that it's a hardware problem and most probably motherboard.

My machine is a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E531, with an i7-3632QM CPU, 8GB RAM and running windows 10 pro.
Also if it may be related, I have upgraded my HDD to an SSD (Crucial MX200 500GB), but did that a few years ago without any problems, and I've only had this issue for a couple of months.

I would be very grateful if anyone can help with some opinions, suggestions and/or possible resolutions that I may try.

Many thanks
Ash

 

[ash1980]

To be honest I was hoping to get some opinions coming through.
It's a bit disheartening to have so many views and 0 responses!
Am I having to buy a new laptop??

 

[eglc]

Can you boot into the bios every time, or only some of the time?

 

[ash1980]

Can you boot into the bios every time, or only some of the time?

not every time.

As I mentioned, when I press the power button the screen powers on without actually displaying anything (no sign of any activity, i.e. no software display) and the fan runs for a few seconds, but that's all the activity I get.
The laptop doesn't actually seem to come on!

I need to press the power button a number of times before at a random point the machine comes on: I first get the black page with 'ThinkPad' written in white for a split second that looks something like this:

Then the windows 10 loads...

 

[Sagar_20]

This indeed sounds like a gpu failure. That's exactly how my AMD graphics card died.

However you are using the integrated graphics.

I would suggest to boot into safe mode ; install and run Display Driver Uninstaller and then remove all the existing graphics drivers.

Now reboot and see what happens.

If you are able to log in to windows, update the drivers.

There is also a chance that this is happening because of accumulation of dust inside your laptop. This will make the fan spin for a few seconds but windows will fail to boot.

 

[ash1980]

Thanks for the response.

I doubt it's a driver problem.
I'll open up the laptop and do a little cleaning inside to see if it makes a difference.

I don't think this is worth repairing considering the age of the machine.
I think it's probably time to buy a new one anyway.
Will just wait another month or so for the summer deals and see what I can pick up.