Laptop screen stays black even though power is on

I have a 7-year-old laptop that I am in the process of replacing. I did not realize that my charger was unplugged and the battery ran completely out when I was using it.

Now I can't get the laptop to turn on and stay on. I tried taking out the battery and unplugging the charger and holding down the power button to discharge static. That didn't help. In fact, it now will not stay on reliably when I push down the power button.

It would be nice if I could get the thing working for a while so I could finish transferring files and whatnot, though I do have a backup of the SSD drive that is in there.

Any ideas?

 

Are you sure it is going off? It could just be the monitor.

Take a flashlight and shine it into the blank screen. Then stick your face up real close to the screen and see if you can see a very faint image of the Windows desktop. If you can, then the problem is the screen's backlighting. Being 7 years old, it could be using an inverter and CCFL (cold-cathode fluorescent lamp) backlight system (modern LCD monitors use LED backlighting).

Replacing the inverter and CCFL is a common repair action which any reliable shop should be able to do with 1 hour of labor plus parts. If handy you can do it on your own. There are many tutorials on the web.

You might also try attaching an external monitor to the notebook and press the appropriate Fn + F-key combination to cycle through the display options (notebook monitor, external monitor, or both). If the computer display is proper on the external monitor, you know the problem is your notebook's monitor. Many users in this situation also connect an external keyboard and mouse and basically turn their notebook into a PC. If you don't have another monitor, most TVs in recent years support computer input.

Beyond that, if your goal is just to transfer your files, the notebook's drive could be removed and with the appropriate adapter, be connected (as a secondary drive) to another computer, then transfer the files that way.