Five Ways to Fix HP Laptop Turns on but Screen is Black Windows 10/11

What to do if your HP laptop turns on but the screen is black?

How to fix HP laptop turns on but screen is black in Windows 10/11

Are you worried that your HP laptop computer turns on but screen is black? Sometimes, the issue could be caused by several reasons, the most common one is the black screen after a Windows update. No matter what condition results in the black screen, we offer you several proven solutions to help you fix this problem.

Option 1. Hard reset your HP laptop

In most cases, faulty hardware can result in a black screen on your HP laptop. You can unplug any connected hardware from your HP laptop and see if this is the source of the issue. 

Step 1. Turn off your laptop.

Step 2. Disconnect the battery, hard drives, and any other attached peripheral devices.

Step 3. Press and hold the laptop power button for at least 60 seconds and release.

Step 4. Plug the charger in after inserting your battery. Don't plug anything else after that.

Step 5. Check to see whether it now works by restarting your laptop.

Option 2. Restart the explorer.exe process

The explorer.exe process controls your laptop's desktop, taskbar, and other features. If it is closed in your system, your desktop and taskbar will be hidden and your screen will be black. In this case, restart the explorer.exe process may solve your problem.

Preparation work: Enable Safe Mode

With the exception of Option 1, you must be logged into Windows on your HP laptop before operations. If not, hard reset your laptop three times, then restart in Safe Mode to avoid further issues.

Step 1. To shut off your computer, press and hold the power button for 10 seconds. As soon as the Windows logo comes on the screen, restart the laptop. Repeat the process twice more to open the WinER.

Step 2. Click Advanced options > Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings.

Step 3. Click Reatsrt, after the system is rebooted, press F4 to enable safe mode.

Restart the explorer.exe process

When your HP laptop is in a safe mode, now you can follow the next steps to restart the explorer.exe process.

Step 1. Press Ctrl, Shift and Esc at the same time to evoke Task Manager. Then click File > Run new task.

Step 2. Type in “explorer.exe” and click OK.

Now you can restart your HP laptop to see if your problem is fixed.

Option 3. Update/Rollback/Disable/Uninstall the device drivers

How to fix HP laptop turns on but screen is black windows 10/11? Black screen issues can also be brought on by incompatible or obsolete drivers. To resolve this problem, you can attempt updating, rolling back, disabling, or uninstalling the device drivers.

Update device drive

Step 1. Right-click on Start and select Device Manager.

Step 2. Any entry that has a yellow warning icon indicates that there might be an issue with the driver. Right-click these entries and select Update Driver.

Step 3. Choose Search automatically for drivers to let Windows install the updates.

Rollback device drives

Step 1. Go to Device Manager and expand the device branch containing driver updates you want to rollback.

Step 2. Right-click the target driver and click Properties.

Step 3. On the Driver interface, click Roll Back Driver.

Disable/Uninstall device drivers

If the black screen error persists, it might be essential to totally disable or uninstall these drivers. To accomplish this, navigate back to the driver properties page you previously visited, select the Driver tab, and then select Disable device or Uninstall device.

Option 4. Disable fast startup

HP laptop turns on but screen is black? Disable fast startup may fix this problem. Follow the steps below to do that.

Step 1. Open Control Panel and view the items by Small icons or Large icons. Then click Power Options.

Step 2. Click Choose what the power button does.

Step 3. Click Change settings that are currently unavailable.

Step 4. Uncheck Turn on fast startup (recommended) and select Save Changes after that.

Now you can restart your HP laptop to apply the setting.

Option 5. Undo recent changes

The black screen on your laptop is probably the result of a recent Windows update or program installation on your computer. If that applies to you, you ought to attempt to uninstall recent Windows updates.

Step 1. Press Win + I to evoke Settings. Click Windows Update in the left panel.

Step 2. Click Update history. Then you can see all the latest updates of your system.

Step 3. Scroll down to click Uninstall updates.

Step 4. Then select the latest update and click Uninstall.

Bonus tip: How to recover data from HP laptop with black screen

Once you fix the problem and use your laptop again, do you notice that some of your important files on it disappear? It's not surprising as a black screen often leads to data loss. Don't panic. We are here to help you recover lost data.

To recover your files safely and quickly, we recommend you use a professional Windows data recovery tool MyRecover. This software offers you comprehensive solutions to all data loss situations. The distinguished advantages of MyRecover are listed below.

Easy-to-use. It has easy operations, you can recover the lost data within only 3 steps.

All-inclusive. It offers comprehensive solutions to save you from all data loss situations. In addition to recovering data from computers with black screens, it can also recover data from formatted disk, crashed system, etc.

Efficient. Embedding an advanced scanning algorithm, it will scan and recover your data deeply and quickly.

Safe. It is 100% secure and trustworthy with a virus-free guarantee.

Compatible. It supports NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, ReFS in Windows 11/10/8/7 and Windows Server.

On your computer, install MyRecover. Then, let's begin the process of recovering lost data.

Step 1. Launch the software on your computer, hover the mouse over the hard drive you want to recover your data from, and then click Scan.

Step 2. The software will scan your drive rapidly and completely. A list of lost files will then show up. By typing the file name into the search box in the top right corner, you may quickly find the desired files.

Step 3. To recover multiple files at once, select the files you want to recover and click Recover x files.

Closing words

If you encounter the HP laptop turns on but screen is black in Windows 10/11, this post can help you successfully solve this problem. If the black screen caused data loss, we also guide you on how to recover the lost files. By the way, to protect your data from such conditions, we recommend you back up your computer regularly, for example, you can use AOMEI Backupper to safeguard your data from any data corruption.