Windows 7 Startup issue - Screen going black

For several months my laptop (HP Pavilion dv6) has been going black about 20% of the time that I start it up. It is more likely to occur when my laptop has only been turned off for a couple hours or less.

The startup process starts as normal, but then goes to black, with the exception of a strip of color that appears in the upper left part of the screen. I can't say for sure, but it might be a miniaturized (1/16th inch by 3 inch) version of my task bar.

The screen stays stuck and the only way out of it is to hold my power button till it goes off. When I restart it asks if I want to "start normally" etc., and it then often asks to do a checkdisk (which I've done to no avail).

I'm curious if anyone is familiar with this type of problem and has any suggestions on how to fix it.

Thank you for your assistance. Here is the result I received:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Windows\system32>sfc /scannow

Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.

Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

C:\Windows\system32>

guest2 said:

For several months my laptop (HP Pavilion dv6) has been going black about 20% of the time that I start it up. It is more likely to occur when my laptop has only been turned off for a couple hours or less.

The startup process starts as normal, but then goes to black, with the exception of a strip of color that appears in the upper left part of the screen. I can't say for sure, but it might be a miniaturized (1/16th inch by 3 inch) version of my task bar.

The screen stays stuck and the only way out of it is to hold my power button till it goes off. When I restart it asks if I want to "start normally" etc., and it then often asks to do a checkdisk (which I've done to no avail).

I'm curious if anyone is familiar with this type of problem and has any suggestions on how to fix it.

Have you tried to remove the battery and use AC power only? If not, give it a try and test the results.

HTH

Thanks for your feedback. Since last posting I updated my graphic driver, which seems it may have resolved the issue. It was intermittent so it's hard to say for sure that it won't return. But for now I'll mark this issue as solved.