Blank Screen on Rebooting Laptop

[AnirbanG007]

I have an HP ay615tx laptop, recently bought new SSD (MX500) and RAM for it. Thing is, sometimes when I reboot the system, or turn it on after a cold shut down, it shows a blank screen after showing the HP logo. Doesn't boot into Windows. The only remedy I've found so far is to press and hold the power button for a few seconds, and then turn on the laptop, which works, and has worked every time. This didn't happen with the HDD.

 

How can I resolve this issue? Please help.

 

PS: The same thing happens after every BIOS update (regardless of SSD or HDD), where there is a blank screen and I have to do the above mentioned process to get it to boot.

[RageTester]

55 minutes ago, AnirbanG007 said:

PS: The same thing happens after every BIOS update (regardless of SSD or HDD), where there is a blank screen and I have to do the above mentioned process to get it to boot.

How often are you updating BIOS on a laptop? Not like you gonna change a motherboard, better leave things that are working as they are.

Try disabling fast boot...

[AnirbanG007]

3 hours ago, RageTester said:

How often are you updating BIOS on a laptop? Not like you gonna change a motherboard, better leave things that are working as they are.

Try disabling fast boot...

TBH, I update the BIOS whenever I see a new one on HP's website, (that is if I feel like checking on the website) which is infrequent to be very precise. The last update came out in June 2020 and I have that installed. I did disable fast boot after getting the new SSD.

 

You're right, I am leaving things the way they are, not like I can help it anyway.

[Analog]

You said you upgraded the RAM. Did you just buy another dimm (assuming you have more than one dimm slot) or did you replace the existing memory with a higher capacity one? I am asking as mixing and matching memory is never a good idea. Not just when it comes to capacity, but also speeds, wattage and brand. 

[AnirbanG007]

1 minute ago, Analog said:

You said you upgraded the RAM. Did you just buy another dimm (assuming you have more than one dimm slot) or did you replace the existing memory with a higher capacity one? I am asking as mixing and matching memory is never a good idea. Not just when it comes to capacity, but also speeds, wattage and brand. 

I didn't mix and match, I bought two 8 GB sticks of the same spec crucial memory.

[Analog]

1 minute ago, AnirbanG007 said:

I didn't mix and match, I bought two 8 GB sticks of the same spec crucial memory.

That's good to hear. Still, this blank screen right after the logo means there is something the laptop is not happy about. Since it was working fine before, you will need to start eliminating one by one the potential culprits. I would start with testing the memory, as this would be done without disassembling the laptop again. My recommendation is to use HCI Memtest: https://hcidesign.com/memtest/ . It's a very easy tool to use if you take the time and read the instructions. I would let it run until at least 400%, as the developers suggest. If you have any memory issues, this will find them. If everything is fine, perhaps swapping back your old primary drive for a while and seeing how the laptop will behave with it might not be a bad idea. 

[AnirbanG007]

44 minutes ago, Analog said:

That's good to hear. Still, this blank screen right after the logo means there is something the laptop is not happy about. Since it was working fine before, you will need to start eliminating one by one the potential culprits. I would start with testing the memory, as this would be done without disassembling the laptop again. My recommendation is to use HCI Memtest: https://hcidesign.com/memtest/ . It's a very easy tool to use if you take the time and read the instructions. I would let it run until at least 400%, as the developers suggest. If you have any memory issues, this will find them. If everything is fine, perhaps swapping back your old primary drive for a while and seeing how the laptop will behave with it might not be a bad idea. 

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I will try the memtest. I can't put in the old drive as it's formatted and I don't have the tools to open up my laptop right now.

[Analog]

24 minutes ago, AnirbanG007 said:

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I will try the memtest. I can't put in the old drive as it's formatted and I don't have the tools to open up my laptop right now.

 

One more thing, when using this memtest, don't use up all of the memory you have. Leave about 1.5GB free for background processes. If you attempt to test all 16GB what will happen is you will start swapping data to the primary drive and it will take forever. The best thing to do is take 14.5GB for example and divide it by the number of threads you have on you CPU. Then open that many instances of memtest and put in the appropriate amount of RAM (14.5GB / by the number of threads) to be tested. This will make everything happen a lot faster. Also, do note that the HCI memtest runs in x86, meaning you cannot test more than 3.5GB or memory per instance. Thus, for example if your processor only has 4 threads, you will need to open 4 instances of memtest and select 3500MB to be tested in each instance. This way you will test 14GB, which should be enough. 

 

[AnirbanG007]

23 minutes ago, Analog said:

 

One more thing, when using this memtest, don't use up all of the memory you have. Leave about 1.5GB free for background processes. If you attempt to test all 16GB what will happen is you will start swapping data to the primary drive and it will take forever. The best thing to do is take 14.5GB for example and divide it by the number of threads you have on you CPU. Then open that many instances of memtest and put in the appropriate amount of RAM (14.5GB / by the number of threads) to be tested. This will make everything happen a lot faster. Also, do note that the HCI memtest runs in x86, meaning you cannot test more than 3.5GB or memory per instance. Thus, for example if your processor only has 4 threads, you will need to open 4 instances of memtest and select 3500MB to be tested in each instance. This way you will test 14GB, which should be enough. 

 

Wow, sounds amazing. I had no idea about any of this. Thank you so much, I learned something new today.

 

My CPU does have only four threads, so I won't even have to do the math.