ASUS X551C boots to complete black screen, No Bios. Fan + Lights still work

wahooker

Estimable
Nov 17, 2014
3
0
4,510
2 year old ASUS X551C that belongs to my son. It was working one day, and with no known changes or damage, he brought it to me the next day like this.

When I plug it up, I see an indicator light for "Charging". When I turn it on, I see the light for "power on" working. (Those are the only 2 indicator lights) Fan also comes on, and the CD drive responds by opening when I hit the button.

There are no other indicators anything is working. No Backlight, no BIOS, no noises or anything

It has a non-removable battery, so I cannot try removing that as part of troubleshooting.

I have tried:

* Holding power button down for 2+ minutes, both plugged and unplugged.
* Plugging to a working external monitor and switching displays using function keys
* Booting while holding F2

Any advice would be appreciated. Its a pretty low end laptop, so I suspect that any fixes requiring disassembly and replacement of parts would probably not be cost effective.
 
Solution
It sounds like it is the display.

If you can't see even on an external monitor (which I am assuming you attached while the laptop was turned 'off' - no power, no fan, etc., and turned on the external monitor and then turned on the laptop) if that is the case, it is probably the graphics card/GPU (and possibly the motherboard) needing replacing.

Note: If you tried the external monitor while the laptop was already on, then retry it as suggested above to see for sure if it will/won't work.
It sounds like it is the display.

If you can't see even on an external monitor (which I am assuming you attached while the laptop was turned 'off' - no power, no fan, etc., and turned on the external monitor and then turned on the laptop) if that is the case, it is probably the graphics card/GPU (and possibly the motherboard) needing replacing.

Note: If you tried the external monitor while the laptop was already on, then retry it as suggested above to see for sure if it will/won't work.
 
Solution