Black screen after cleaning and reapplying thermal paste.
Hello,
I opened up my out of warranty Predator Helios 300 to clean out the fans of built up dust and to re-apply thermal paste to the CPU and GPU. I made sure to de-static my hands before and after disassembly and reassembly and I made sure I was grounded to prevent shock risk. After re-assembling the PC and making sure all of the parts were connected in their proper places and sockets, I attempted to turn on the PC. The PC turns on the fans and the keyboard light, but the screen is black. It won't even allow me to enter the BIOS menu. Can anybody help me?
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Hi @garrennovak,
Did you also disconnect the battery from the motherboard as well before you started the cleaning process, you never mentioned if you did or not?
With the laptop turned on etc, try shining a flashlight at an angle close to the screen,and check if you can see any images at all. They will be very faint if they are there so trying this in a darkened room may help.
If you can see images then there's a backlight problem with the screen.
What is the motherboard's model number (printed on the board itself) as the schematics may be needed to be found to find out what's wrong.
You could also try connecting an external monitor to the laptop (HDMI - TV?) and check if the video is working and that it is only the display in the laptop that is the problem.
by jayeff
@jayeff External monitors do not work and I tried flashing a flashlight at an angle, no dice. Unfortunately, I did not disconnect the battery now that I think about it.
by Garren Novak
@garrennovak
No video is not good.
The laptop may not even be passing POST (power on self test) on startup.
Try a power refresh, you never know it might work.
Turn off the laptop and disconnect the charger if connected.
Open the laptop and disconnect the battery from the motherboard. You don't have to remove the battery, just disconnect it.
Next press and hold the laptop's Power button for a full 30 seconds and then release it. Reconnect the battery, reassemble the laptop, reconnect the charger and see if it turns on with a display.
If no good when it is open check what the motherboard 's model number is printed on the board itself e.g. it might show LA-F952P or LA-L191P etc as there seems to be a lot of different laptop variants with the same name. Must depend on the specifications I suppose.
Asking as you most likely will need the schematics to find out what's wrong.
FYI Always, always, always disconnect the battery from the motherboard as soon as it is accessible after opening the laptop, before doing anything else, when working inside a laptop. There's always power somewhere on the board even when the laptop is turned off.
The power button is not a power isolating button. Its function is to signal the intention of the user to the BIOS/OS i.e. turn on, turn off, wake etc. Think of the laptop as being in an extremely low power state when it is off and not that it is totally disconnected from any power at all.
The only time that the battery should be left connected when the laptop is open is if you need it when you're testing for power at different points on the board to find out what's wrong if something isn't working.
by jayeff