I am one of the many unfortunate people who paid good money to own a HP Pavilion tx 2000 touchscreen laptop. This particular series has been plagued with problems related to faulty Nvidia graphics chips. One fine morning, a couple of months ago, my laptop refused to boot up. I got what they call the “Black Screen”, which is not less painful than the notorious Windows Blue Screen of Death. Back then I tried a lot of things to revive it but nothing worked. Then suddenly, on its own, it decided to come alive. Not sure exactly how that happened.
An hour ago, it died again. I went on my wife’s laptop, typed “HP tx 2000 black screen” into Google and got pages and pages of rich and colorful content. By colorful I am referring to the language used with respect to HP. I even found an online petition called “Dead Hp tx 1000 / tx 2000 tablet pcs” that had a total of 1623 signatures. I added mine as number 1624. I found all kinds of solutions, some of which involved removing the motherboard and hot wiring something. Now I am a Mechanical Engineer. I prefer to work with a hammer as opposed to a soldering iron. So I gave those solutions a pass.
Eventually I came across a YouTube video titled “free fast fix for hp tx1000 no video or boot“, in which the person recommends pressing the J, K and L keys with the lower palm of your hand really hard and simultaneously hit the power button. Yes, you read that right, press hard using lower palm, not fingers. I believe the idea here is to physically dislodge the chip or something like that. Frankly I didn’t want to know. I simply wanted to fix my laptop or break it. And this procedure was perfect either way. This is how we fixed or broke most things back in college – brute force.
So I did exactly what the guy said. I pressed my lower palm on the J, K and L keys as hard as I could and hit the power button. And Holy Crap! It came to life. Hallelujah!
I think I am beginning to like this. If this happens again and this procedure does not work, I am going to invent my own. And my procedure is going to include a hammer – a big one.
The same happened to my HP tx1000-series — twice!
First time it cost me $446 for the repair by HP, which my credit card's extended warranty paid for. The repair included a 90-day warranty. (I can get a brand new notebook computer for that price with a 1-yr warranty!) Because Vista on the tx1000-series is so sluggish, I didn't use it much, preferring my faster and quieter LG netbook running Linux Mint.
After 4-5 months, I fired up the tx again, and same problem. HP again offered to charge me $46 to repair the same problem. Judging from the responses of their tech support person, I suspect he knew that the overheated motherboard is a fundamental design flaw, but could do nothing to help me.
I have since removed some of the parts, such as turning the 200GB drive into a portable drive (with a $30 enclosure), and installing one of its 2GB RAM modules in my son's notebook.
I'll have to try the palm trick you describe.
Good luck. but keep a hammer close by. You might just need it.
Years ago (early 70's), Deelip, whilst brake testing a new bus the onboard HP instruments logging and transmitting data from the bus stopped working. The testing authority and owners of the gear did not know the cause and with a very tight schedule for the test track I had no time to waste waiting for them as they scratched their heads.
I opened up their 'black box' and whilst fiddling around the system started so I deduced a cracked circuit (motherboard) was the problem – vibrations passed thru' from testing I thought.
So I rolled, tightly, a piece of news paper, forced it under the circuit board, 'forced' my office boy to sit in the passenger seat of the vehicle with the system on his lap (shock absorber) and completed all the high speed, fully loaded brake tests with no more delay.
I too am a mechanical design guy; sometimes with electronics it helps to know how to 'bend' things to get electrons to flow.
But a question remains how many times can you 'lean' on you computer before the fix no longer works and something breaks?
Yeah, what we sometimes do can be very scary. But then, when you are in tht state of mind, you really don't give a damn.
Oh my goodness, it worked.
(I had to plug in a USB key with Linux Mint to boot the tx1000, since I had pulled the hard drive, as noted earlier.)
Great! Now I am getting ideas for my HP laser printer in office. At times it goes into a trance and indefinitely starts cleaning itself.
Looks like HP notebooks have problems everywhere. My last laptop was HP and it had several interesting and entertaining problems appearing one after the other. First, the battery died COMPLETELY after just 6 months and it worked on mains power only thereafter.
Next, the cusror started to jump around randomly whle at work. No, no virus at work. It went to HP Service twice but they could not fix it, although each time, they gave an intelligent sounding explanation and claimed to have fixed it.
And finally, the display started giving streaks of funny colored lines, each of which changed patterns every 4 weeks.
Now, I have a DELL and things are much better.
- Rakesh
Rakesh,
Over time I have come to the conclusion that the HP dealer sitting here in Goa is a complete nut job when it comes to trouble shooting. I bought this laptop while I was on a holiday in Singapore.
I have already mentally prepared myself to drive my car over this laptop if and when the need arises.
Heh Deelip, make sure to photograph just how you manage, using your car, to park a tyre on the J, K & L keys whilst you hit the power button
LOL
)
My HP Pavillion tx2000 has that infamous “no boot” issue too.
So I went online on my horrifyingly slow PC (128Mb RAM!) to find solutions.
I discovered TWO solutions on youtube: 1) Heating GPU with 1000watt bulb [requires tearing the laptop apart] 2) pressing j, k, l with the palm.
I was NOT ready to open up the laptop. Besides, I may not be able to put it back together again.
So at the time, I tried solution 2.
WORKED.
Unfortunately, it's only temporary. As soon as I switch it off, it will have the same problem again.
Went to forums… Found out someone used a hair-dryer on the part where the GPU is (it's visible) as an alternative to taking the GPU out and heating it.
Tried that, didn't work. Decided to press j, k, l with my palm. VOILA!
Once again, not permanent.
After many attempts of switching it back on again and again (it's like Level 1, 2, 3 and so on TT cruel arcade game with the HP pavillion), it gets harder and harder to switch it back on.
So my final and most effective solution (for me at least) is to:
1) Remove battery [it seems when the battery is heated together it will shut itself down]
2) cover parts other than the vent where GPU is visible with towel(s)
3) Use a hair-dryer to heat the GPU for 3 minutes
4) Cover the keyboard with the small towel [less hand pains=more strength] then press k, l, and ; [seems more effective] with lower palm
5) While still pressing the buttons, swith on the power.
TA DA!
what a workout.
Hi, I am now using this hardcore boot sistem ( hard JKL pressing with palm of the hand ) for my Pavilion tx 2000 too. As I am a pure IT user without any further knopwledge about what´s happening inside of this blackbox with screen, can somebody tell me how long this way of booting the computer works ? Is there any other solution, I mean a tecnical one, buying a new battery ( I read something about overheating of the battery – also an experience which I have since longer with my computer, just unpossible to have it on the legs or you get same burned ), or changing something in the hardware inside the computer ? The solution with the hairdryer I can´t see for me, as I am using the computer for work, and getting the hairdryer out when I am in front of my client, well will make them run out of the store I guess.
Thanks for your help and seuggestion
My email is: jensklunker@yahoo.es
Wishing you a good day ( withour HP computer )
Best Regards
Jens
Holy Shit!!!
Your very odd sounding solution work!!! I cannot believe this. I was about to scrap the damned machine and go Mac
Thanks
its a great problem — all HP pavillions have design flaws they are not meant to work properly …if u change the motherboard .this problem repeats itself within 6 months try http://www.hplies.com — the best thing u can do is that use its part —otherwise dump it..its will need too much money and problem will be same after some months…just discard it…this is only solution
all my lights light up but my wifi and sound stays amber. same as it did before in the middle of a boot up. Only the screen stays blank. My screen doesnt lite up at all. is this what your calling a blue screen? I have had issues from the start with my tx2000. some times no boot up. but I could allways manualy shut it down and it would reboot fine. then other times it would boot up with it looking like it did out of the box. all my icons would be gone loaded programs etc. that was a real trip. it has been setting for sevrial months. It will not boot up at all now. I tryed the jkl trick but doesnt work either. I will post back whether or not the hammer works. lol. any ideas?
Oh and when it lask worked i was in the middle of tryn to play a personal video from my computer and a error came up and said it had to close now a critical error was found and something abougt a dump file being created.
My tx2000 went into coma, not lights, blank screen, nothing. I have finally installed Linux on it and it appears to be working fine now. Somehow Windows Vista was heating up the NVIDIA card to melting point. Linux doesn't.
Amen to that!!! And thank the almighty that we were not born equals, otherwise we'd be scratching our posterior as we speak..
Again Deelip, you caught my attention, and I spilled a cup of good choco on my lap with that comment “complete nut job”.
I like it when business oriented people are put on the spotlight like that..
Why are they even there?! I mean come on!! As geeks we should be the ones there and we'll do a better jobs than they. (On the other hand..)
well, i bought 2 TX2000, neither one works now, same, black screen, the HD doesnt 'run' as it usually does when first boot up. tried the jkl thing without success…..HEELLLLPPP!!!
Obviously, it's past the 1 year warranty and didnt buy extended warranty, thought that when u spend almost $1K in a laptop it should last a while (3-5 yrs) i guess i was wrong
Ouch. Two? That means you must be twice as angry as me. And I am already shit pissed.
My problem popped up @ 1yr 5mos since purchase.
Called HP – no help, even though they had a recall of the DV pavillion series for the exact same issue.
They KNOW this is an issue between their MB and the NVIDIA GPU, otherwise the recall of the similar models in the line wouldn't have happened. They're only not acting because not enough customers have griped.
call HP 1-877-917-4380
Launch a case.
Expect some malarky about them offering to repair it for half the charge (~$425 cdn), but tell them that's not good enough.
Maybe if they get enough calls, they'll do something about it.
3200+ signatures so far on this guy's petition; add yours:
http://www.petitiononline.com/deadhptx/petition...
I have ever meet this phenonmene ,but I don't know what to do,after read your article,I know how to handle it,thanks for your post.
Wow! Thank you! I was at the end of my wits with this. All my business notes (they were backed up) and needed for today when my screen went black. Immediately did a web search and found your note, tried the palm press and surprisingly, it worked! Going out shopping for a new tablet since I do not want to be palm pressing my tablet in business meetings. New tablet will certainly not be HP! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!