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I have a Sager laptop that has an odd issue. It's not necessarily a major issue at the moment, but I feel it might be cause for concern as a potential harbinger of future problems.

When I shut down my laptop then power it on again later, the laptop sits with a black screen for quite a long time. It's not a blank screen; it's a black screen. No backlight.

During this time, the HDD activity light does a quick blink every couple seconds, and the fans are spinning. Nothing else seems to be happening.

After a couple minutes, the BIOS screen will appear and the laptop will boot as normal. Once it finishes booting, everything runs normally.

Here's what I've deduced so far:

  • Not overheating. Everything runs fine prior to shutting down, and this issue occurs even if I don't start it up again until hours later.
  • Not a "display toggled off" issue. I've pressed the key to enable swap internal/external display and it makes no difference.
  • Not a driver issue. This occurs while the BIOS is initializing.
  • Removing the battery and doing a "hard reset" by holding the power button for 15 seconds doesn't help.

Any help is appreciated!

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  • How old is the laptop? Which is a leading question for suspecting the CMOS battery might be failing.
    – Andrew Morton
    Commented Oct 14, 2015 at 22:55
  • @AndrewMorton It is about seven months old.
    – jssblck
    Commented Oct 14, 2015 at 23:17
  • @gearheadalex It could still be a dud cell. Its that or the chipset/EPROM is having a hard time completing post which isnt a great sign.
    – Linef4ult
    Commented Oct 15, 2015 at 1:02
  • @gearheadalex 1) If you haven't already, now would be a good time to get an external disk drive and back up all your data to it. 2) A computer only seven months old should not be behaving like that, and if it is still in warranty then Sager (or whomever you bought it from) may replace it for you. 3) When you mention the BIOS screen, is it one with lots of text or just a graphic? If the latter, then somewhere in the BIOS there should be a setting to change it to the verbose BIOS screen, which might pause for a long time on one line of text which would hint where the problem is.
    – Andrew Morton
    Commented Oct 15, 2015 at 19:08
  • @AndrewMorton Good point. I'll give the text mode a shot, it was on the graphics mode. If you want to add that as an answer I will accept, as it sounds like that or the manufacturer is the best bet from here.
    – jssblck
    Commented Oct 15, 2015 at 21:53

1 Answer 1

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Following your comments:

  • If you haven't already, now would be a good time to get an external disk drive and back up all your data to it.
  • I suggest that you set the BIOS to its text mode rather than showing a graphic. If it pauses for a long time at some stage, that will give a hint as to what is not working correctly. If it is something to do with the disk drive, it might be worth running a utility which shows the S.M.A.R.T. status of the drive.
  • A computer only seven months old should not be behaving like that, and if it is still in warranty then Sager (or whomever you bought it from) may replace it for you.
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