No Screen

[jwkil1978]

I have an Acer 5535 and one day decided just to not have the screen. I have all my docs on it and need them off. I have gotten a vga cable and used another monitor (I hadn't a clue what I was doing) and plugged it in and nothing happened. Thinking it might just not be capable, I used another laptop and nothing. How the heck can I get stuff off my old laptop?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Plastic Nev]

Hi and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help.

There are basically two questions you are asking, firstly the screen on your laptop, it may be a simple problem and not too expensive to cure.

 

With the laptop turned on and hopefully the operating system fully booted, try looking from the side or sideways on at the screen, can you see a vague outline of what should be showing?

 

If so it is either the backlight lamp or the lamp inverter unit gone. These can be replaced fairly cheaply.

 

Secondly you ask about retrieving the data.

If the laptop has died completely and the screen cannot be repaired, the hard drive needs to be removed.

 

You then connect that via an adapter to the USB socket of a known to be good computer, all your data can be copied over to that computer from the original hard drive.

 

The original hard drive will show up on the working computer as an external drive in the same way a flash or pen drive does.

 

Nev.

[KenB]

Hi and welcome to ExTS

 

decided just to not have the screen

Was this you .......or the machine that made the decision ?

 

On my Acer if I plug in an external monitor I can toggle to it by using Fn + F5

Take a look on the "F" keys there will be blue icons - you are looking for the one with 2 monitors.