I have an old 2008 HP 6715S laptop whose one virtue was that it booted. Not any more.

As a hardware head, I look to preserve hardware alive. But on switch on, this flashes some lights briefly, self checks flashes them again twice, after which it will accept keyboard inputs, specifically
F9 = Boot Order
F10 - Setup

I never get to the stage where it accepts keyboard input. It does read from the dvd drive, but doesn't boot off bootable dvds. So it would seem no dodges are open to me. The screen never switches on. From POST cards errors in bygone days, I know that the BIOS usually stops at the error, e.g. "going to try the disks now..." and it never comes back.
What triggered this was that I considered upgrading vista to windoze 7. I had extracted the software key, and was about to try that. win7 said:"Go away, sonny and do x,y,& z. Then we'll think about it." And now it's buggered. I suspect hd, but proving it?

I had a desktop system that did something similar. One day it would no longer boot. Nothing would come up on the screen. The system would power on, all the fans would go, the light on the DVD drive would flash for a bit, then nothing. The issue was a mobo that went bad. Sounds like it may be something similar for you.

Hi,

It seems you can get into BIOS via hot key. Check your boot order.

If you want to boot from the DVD/CD then move it to first boot device and see if it will boot there.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

1. Can you boot off an usb drive? If so, create a live distro on the usb and try that.
2. If you can open up the back and get to the hard drive easily, pull it out and connect to an external type hub. You can then check the drive on another system.

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate so many folks trying to lighten my waste disposal.

@ onebuck & ArfaSmif: From memory the boot order is set 1) optical drive 2) hard disk. As I said, I never get to the stage where it accepts keyboard input to select boot order. It's hung at this spot previously, although I've always had it back after a few minutes. Not this time. Even now (following morning here) it's stubbornly refusing to go.
It checks the dvd (Is it working & loaded) but won't boot from it. The bios have stopped before that.

@ ArazelEternal: I'm pretty sure you're on the money. In my past I worked a contract fixing banger pcs that were around the country driving paint shakers for some years. I had POST cards, and watching them was instructive. The numbers came up for the various tests it was performing. When it went out to lunch on one particular number, there your problem lay.The bios would halt there.

It's blown hardware, and what bit hardly matters, because I'm not going to buy hardware to prop this up. I posted because I thought "Maybe HP have some method of diagnostics built in to all their laptops," but they obviously don't. It's not easy for me to do anything with hardware, because my left arm is 95% paralyzed, but I have a son here who may give it 10 minutes. The only other possibility is power supply, but it wouldn't get as far as it does without that.

Its possible that a bad PSU caused this issue in the first place. If it wasn't regulating voltage correctly (i.e. voltage was too high) it can cause damage that would lead to this. All it takes is a slight spike in the voltage to cause some real issues that may take time to notice. Either way, it sounds like its toast. I dont think Id bother fixing it. Just pull the drive and hook it up to another system and pull any data needed off of it.

I did ask my son, who has inherited my cheapskate attitude to pull the hard disk, and each stick of ram in turn and see if it comes up. My guess is the HD, but my guesses are not worth much these days. I've lost the knack. It's not getting opened, except to put a hammer on the hd. Who wants a 10 year old 160G drive?

Well, I got to the bottom of this.
I put in a bootable dvd, removed the drive and the one removable stick of ram. It still wouldn't boot.

It's hardware. I'm not fixing it, and there's an electronic trash collection tomorrow. The sure & certain knowledge that the BIOS doesn't go beyond any failing test aids in diagnosis.

As I've had my head in the sand through bad health, let me ask: Is there anything similar to Power On Self Test cards for laptops?

I do, I do!! At my house, that's practically newfangled.

Yes, tho the one I have requires a parallel port for data and a USB port for power. (I think I paid about $5 for it on eBay. All the ones I found at the time were identical, despite widely disparate pricing.)

Far as I can find, USB-only variants do not exist, tho there are mini-PCIe versions meant for laptop use. Where you plug in such a beast, I have no idea.
-- ETA: under $3 on ebay.

I don't have a parallel port, or pcmcia, for that matter. I had usb which I couldn't access without the keyboard, cdrom requiring similar treatment, ethernet & & wifi (requiring firmware). Ethernet probably had TFTP. But the bios was halting on the basics. Even the screen wasn't on. The cdrom was exercised, but that's all.

As for the drive, sorry but it's gone out with the box.

Yeah, didn't sound very promising. I hate to give up on hardware myself. Laptops are a bear to diagnose, being you can't easily get at the guts.

i would say send it to poor people in india, but they're running freeBSD over there i know

THROW IT AWAY

get back to work

if it's a 64 bit machine and has at least 4G mem you can run linux or win10 or even a "hackintoch" (apple sierra) or freebsd or ...

if it's a 32bit (which i'm sure were still sold in 2006), throw it away for real

and it won't be "valid" too long. in a few years it may be too old to use. so your thinking "not for long" strategy

you really need a purpose. don't fool with it unless your really itching for a terminal for a particular need

check ebay and see what they are selling for used. that should get you in the neighborhood of what your saving or loosing

It's already gone, as you can see from my previous post.