I need help with a laptop

So my ex-girlfriend is asking how to fix her laptop because it has a black screen. Here is what I know so far,

It's an HP Laptop
The screen is COMPLETELY black, no flashing lights, nothing.
There is a blinking light on the keyboard and it's white
The screen appeared before the Windows Logo Screen.
They are just your everyday computer user, nothing fancy like removal of hardrives, etc.

Edit: Something called HP Smart Media or something

I'm guessing their computer doesn't have enough memory or that their video card is deteriorating.

Any suggestions?

[I know my ex-girlfriend, but not my ex-friend]

Sometimes Windows and HP will mess you up by installing some experimental and propietary drivers, so you could try and enter safe mode (and uninstall the current video driver) then, look for a downgrade (generic one from Nvidia, Intel or ATI) for her laptop.

Also, I reccomend this only because it says that she CAN see the bootscreen while starting up, my guess is that either a problem with the driver or something is going on with the integrated graphics on her laptop.

I don't really see how that is a problem caused by a depletion of memory...unless we are talking about a really, really old laptop running newer software. (even netbooks with 1GB and Atom can do fairly well on 7)

Hope this helps.

I've seen quite a few hp's burn out at work, most likely a hardware problem than software, I'd say a blown fl inverter but if it's completely black (ie not just a dead backlight) then it may be the northbridge borked/burnedout/faulty. Try hooking it up to an external monitor through vga or hdmi and seeing if it'll display anything out. Sometimes it's not set to automatically duplicate monitors to the external monitor, but if it does then we can rule out the board's gpu being dead and focus on its lcd panel.

You say it's completely black, but if you bring a bright light to the screen really close can you see any images on the screen? It's hard to see even if you do this though, so look carefully. If so, the screen's backlight may have died. Unless the laptop itself shows no signs of working either (but judging by what you said, it seems to sort of boot up).

This happened to my laptop once before. It's kind of hard to be sure from that description.


Edit:
I'm a dumbass... should have read one post above me :D

Most of the time this happens, the RAM modules are loose. Open it up, take them out, and put em back in.

When you say completely black, do you mean the pixels are on but black or the pixels are off?

This happens to my Lenovo where the screen is pitch black, but just like what Yanger said, If I bring a bright light close to the screen then I can see everything, even though it is still hard



Edit: Typical newbie, Replied without reading what others have said -.-

Don't know if it's resolved yet, but on one of my HP laptops that I now use as a HTPC, it had a black screen after turning it on. But the issue would be resolved if I apply pressure under the touchpad (push up from below).