Laptop repair from drop

[trench762]

Hello I am new to the forums, I have searched to no avail on help. We have a laptop that was dropped, upon restarting the hard drive had failed and the monitor cracked. I'm not certain if anything else is damaged but I thought I could purchase a new hard drive, install windows and use the HDMI or VGA port to connect it to an external monitor. With the new hard drive installed the VGA and HDMI ports don't appear to be working. I'm wondering if this is an issue with no drivers being put on the PC yet. If so is there any way to get windows installed without being able to see the screen.

I also have a second laptop and was wondering if the new hard drive were put in it, then windows installed it, would I then be able to transfer the hard drive to the first laptop and then the drivers work for the ports?

 

[carnageX]

I also have a second laptop and was wondering if the new hard drive were put in it, then windows installed it, would I then be able to transfer the hard drive to the first laptop and then the drivers work for the ports?

If the laptops are the exact same... then it would most likely work. If they're not the same.. then there's a 50/50 shot of it working. It might BSOD right away on boot...it might book all the way though.

However, your broken-screen laptop should still be able to use a 2nd monitor through VGA at least. Does nothing appear when the monitor is plugged in?

I'd look into replacing the screen first if you could. Used this site several times; see if you can find a price for one here (if not, check eBay): Laptop Screen replacement, LCD screens repair from $34.99. Tablet, Acer, Apple, Samsung, Dell, HP Compaq, Toshiba, IBM Lenovo, Sony, Gateway, Asus.

 

[trench762]

The monitor doesn't work when plugged into VGA, it says no signal. I just don't wanna buy something I can't return if it won't fix the laptop.

 

[carnageX]

The monitor doesn't work when plugged into VGA, it says no signal. I just don't wanna buy something I can't return if it won't fix the laptop.

Hmm, if it's not even displaying on the 2nd monitor.. then there may be bigger issues when it got dropped.

You could try booting off of a Windows install disc, or Linux LiveCD while the 2nd monitor is plugged in, to see if it displays anything on the 2nd monitor while booted into some kind of environment, rather than just BIOS.