I bought the laptop back in February of 2015. I've used it maybe 2 dozen times as I'm primarily a desktop computer user. I say this because this laptop shows zero signs of wear and has very little use. So I know it's not program bog down or something similar. It mostly just sits there, unused until I eventually need it for an hour or 2.

2 weeks ago, I tried powering on and noticed that the screen was black with a very faint flicker. It would boot up after about 45 minutes. Worked normal. Next time it took a few hours. Next time it was overnight. I looked through the system log to see if anything looked off, all was fine. I took the opportunity to back up the harddrive and download all the updates from the Lenovo site. I did each one without a restart, but once I got to the next to last one (Bios, then AMD) the Bios update required an automatic restart. Laptop restarted and went back to the flicker. Now I've had it turned on for a day or 2 with the flicker and it never boots.

What I've tried:

Tried booting with just battery and just power cord, no boot, just flicker.
Tried booting connected by HDMI, then VGA to another monitor. No boot, just flicker.
Tried booting without HDD inserted, no boot just flicker.
Took apart the laptop to check that everything was seated properly and nothing looked amiss. All good. Had hoped I could remove the CMOS for a BIOS reset, but it's soldered into the motherboard on this device and I'd rather hold that until I absolutely know that's what I have to do.
Tried One Key Recovery. No boot, just flicker.

(Also of course tried the battery discharge by holding the power down, then powering up loads of times. Same result.)

I think I will leave it plugged in and flashing the black screen to see if it eventually boots to the OKR page, then do recovery and see if I can run a hardware scan. Fingers crossed. Repair at centers is a bit of a moot point as it usually costs about as much as what you pay for the laptop. Unfortunate state of how things work nowdays.

I find it a bit unfortunate that this laptop can have so little use and zero abuse and still have this issue. Sounds like a manufacturing flaw.

Lenovo support says to take it to a repair center, but as I'm fairly savvy with tech I'd like to know if there's anything else I can do myself with this nearly unused laptop giving me fits.

What are you working on?

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