Hi everybody,

My 4-year-old HP envy laptop (dv6-7245) was frequently crashing due to overheating, so I decided to CLEAN the fan and apply new thermal paste.

I fully disassembled the laptop to access the fan, from which I removed a thick layer of dust. Then I removed the old thermal paste from the CPU heat sink with alcohol and replaced it with new paste.
When reassembled, I connected to the ac adapter and tried to turn it on.

The laptop makes its usual STARTUP noises (fan whirring, hard drive spinning) but the screen is black. Caps lock button is blinking continuously. Tried to reseat RAM and remove static electricity, and disassembled/reassembled 3x more to make sure everything is in its place. Also tried connecting to external display, and same result. Don't know what to do now-- this sounds like one for a tech expert. Any suggestions?

Thanks for helping,

-TylerVerify all ribbon cables are attached properly to the main board and ribbon cable locks locked. If you removed ribbons without RELEASING the ribbon cable locks then you could have damaged the connection. You arent suppose to yank on them until they come out, there are small PLASTIC locks on them. Its very common for people to just pull them forcefully from the ribbon cable to board connection dragging the ribbon out of the jacks jaws as well as pressing firmly to get the ribbon back into the jack without making sure the jaw is unlocked first then applying the ribbon cable lock.