HP 8440p laptop with Win 10 - black screen ?

netrate · 20 Oct 2021

I have a weird occurrence on this older laptop HP 8440p. Every once in a while - and too often - the screen will go black - the cursor will still be working and the machine is running, but the screen will be black and nothing will happen. I have left it for hours and the computer does not come back on. This will happen when it is being used or when it is sitting idle.
The other day I was playing a game on it and the screen went black. I could still hear the game being played and the cursor were still responsive but I could see nothing.
What I have done :
1) Used the MCT and created a new win 10
2) updated the drivers the best I could (they only have drivers for win 7 on the HP website)
3) I have turned off the power/sleep options.

Any suggestions? Also, I do not know how to get into SAFE MODE - pressing f8 did not work.

spunk · 20 Oct 2021

Press the Windows key +X and choose Device Manager. Expand Display. Take note of the Video device if it is Intel or nVidia. Go to the HP Download Drivers site for your model. Choose Windows 7 as your OS. Download the Video driver for your model. When it downloads it unzips to a place on your HDD, usually C:\SWSetup. or some such. Take note of where it goes. It will start the install, if that fails, browse to the Unzipped location. Open the downloaded file, Right click Setup.exe and choose Properties/Compatibility. Take the drop down arrow and choose to make the driver Compatible with Windows 7. Also put a check in the box to Run as Administrator. Apply and OK. Double Click Setup.exe to install the driver.
If this doesn't help, the laptop LCD screen maybe failing. Try attaching an external monitor to the laptop, if this works, then the LCD screen needs to be replaced. If you see the same behavior, then the Video chip on the motherboard is failing.

netrate · 20 Oct 2021

I will try that and report back. Thank you.

eLPuSHeR · 21 Oct 2021

Good day.

Another ideas to try:

Go to power options and set display and suspend to NEVER.
Disable fast startup if enabled too.

netrate · 23 Oct 2021

The system does not like the nvidia drivers in windows 10. It says :

"The NVIDIA setup program could not locate any drives that are compatible with your current hardware. Setup will now exit"

Even from the oldest to the most recent NVIDIA control panel driver, I could not get it to run.

I went through each setup file and changed the compatibility mode to Win 7 and the rights to admin. Should I change all of the files to compatibility win 7?

eLPuSHeR · 24 Oct 2021

Run Windows Update and check for updates - then, Optional Updates -> Drivers Updates

Check what drivers are shown there (if any).

spunk · 24 Oct 2021

Press the Windows key +X and choose Device Manager. Expand Display.Take note of the Video device if it is Intel or nVidia. Go to the HP Download Drivers site for your model.

If you don't have an nVidia Video device, then you should download the Intel Driver.

netrate · 24 Oct 2021

Ok, well it seems that the LCD is acting up. I hooked it up to a external monitor and it works. I am not sure what is causing the issue, faulty graphics card or whatever, but at least it isn't the entire computer. I am not sure if this can be fixed as is or just continue to use an external monitor with it. I was thinking about opening it up and blowing out the board with some compressed air, but not sure if it is worth it or not.