No Bios Screen/Boot (IFL90)

I don't know what went wrong but I was trying to install a fresh copy of windows 7, AFAIK I went to sleep with it fully working only to wake up with this issue.
When booting up the laptop, all the lights come on, the fan turns on and I can even control the cd tray however, the screen is absolutely blank. The bios does not show and it will just remain at this blank screen endlessly.

I'm all out of idea's... and without the bios I have no idea what to do.

School will be starting in a few days so excuse my panic-y cry for HELP!

 

The CD will eject from having power, that does not mean anything. It would be more meaningfull if you can hear harddriver acces.

Have you tried with an external monitor?

 

Noted Just tried with an external monitor it doesn't output anything to it.
Can't tell if the HDD is spinning but I can say the fan goes good and loud...

 

What about LED? Can you see HD activity there?

 

Yes the hd led does blink when it boots.

 

-accidental double-
Delete pls

 

That points to the motherboard/cpu/memory/HDD being fine. The fact that an external monitor shows nothing would exclude the LCD panel or backlight to be defective. So your graphics modules remains.

 

Ouch, and you would be recommending buying a new video card?
That kind of purchase on a "hopefully could fix" would not be my best interest on a 3 year old computer...

 

There's a fairly good chance your graphics card is dead. If you look around this forum, you'll see that a lot of people had this happen to them. You can temporarily fix it by taking the laptop apart, disconnecting the GPU and baking it in an oven (search the forum for more detailed instructions).

That said, this exact same problem happened to me 9 months ago when I was installing Linux in dual-boot with Win7 on my JFL92. After one of the reboots, everything appeared to work, but there was nothing on the screen. I thought the thing was dead, but after I let it sit for a while, it came back to life and has worked properly until now. If this happened to you during OS installation, try letting it sit without power for 15 minutes to clear the RAM before doing anything more drastic.

 

That is up to you. As you may have figured out, I sell MXM cards. If you just want your machine to work or want it in a state you can eBay it, you can go for the cheapest card we have. If you want some gaming as well, you might want to shell out some more. Or you could dump it and move on

Also of interest: COMPAL IFL90 Upgrade page

 

With no BIOS showing up, but hearing the HDD/CD-ROM being accesses plus knowing you have a 8600M GT in a FL90, I am also very sure you have a dead 8600M GT.

I wrote a very detailed guide that deals with the replacing of a 8600M GT with a ATI HD 3650. I will update it later today. Have a look there to get a better idea what is needed to replace your gfx card.

Good luck!

 

Well it ended up booting up working after a few hours. I ran into the same problem today. Again waiting a while and it did start up. I don't like how unreliable it's been. It is likely the card is dying, It's been progressively getting less stable (running REALLY HOT), it still strangely although pushes out a higher 3dmark06 score by 500 points from when I first bought the comp.

 

Well, I run the same processor as you do, and I think this laptop is still greast for working and occasional gaming.

That's the reason why I thought I go for the around 100€ investment and try to repair it. That's the exact same question you have to answer to yourself, now.

All I can tell you is that the replacement, even for a total noob (as I was) is not hard to do.

On the other hand, your laptop is also around 3 years old now, I guess. So getting a replacement is also a valid option, more so as you still can sell yours as it is.

I'd say it most depends on how much spare time and how much spare money you can work with - and of course how curious you are getting it running by yourself again, hehe.

Good luck on either path you choose!

 

Have you ever cleaned the dust out? It won't help you if the card is dying on you, but it will reduce the heat.

 

Many thanks to your description! It is just the solution for my problem, It's very valuable.

 

My IFL90 has met the same fate, just after my 3 year warranty expired. Comp boots up fine, but i get no screen... even if I try switching to S-vid or an external monitor. I'm just going to call it lost and get a new laptop with Optimus switching. That way, if my discrete card dies at least the machine will still work!