HP 15-af123cl Troubleshooting

The power light is on, but the screen stays black

It is possible that the light level of where you are is too bright to see the lighting of the screen. Try hitting the F6 button with the picture of a little sun and plus sign at the top of the laptop keyboard to turn up the brightness of the screen.

Close the laptop then open it up again. If the screen still does not light up, turn the computer off and back on.

The Wi-Fi network shows up on the computer, but the laptop will not connect to it

Double-check that the password is correct on a password-protected network. Try retyping it more than once being extremely cautious to enter it correctly.

Click the button to retry connecting to the Wi-Fi. If after trying this more than once the error persists, turn off and turn back on the Wi-Fi capabilities on the device by clicking the button in the lower left corner of the small pop-up screen with the Wi-Fi network information. If a few attempts of this does not work, then turn off the laptop and turn it back on.

The laptop is producing too much heat.

This computer has its vents on the left side of the computer; make sure that those vents aren’t being blocked or obscured by anything to ensure that the fans can do their jobs.

Turn the computer completely off and wait a couple of minutes to ensure the capacitors are discharged. Now open the computer making sure you have a grounding band on as the inside of a computer could break if it receives static shocks, and look for dust on the inside. If there is, remove the dust with cotton swabs and isopropyl alcohol, taking extra care not to turn the fan inside the computer the wrong direction.

Check the computer by listening for the fan when the computer starts up. If there are no fan sounds at all, even as the computer gets hotter, the fan is broken and needs to be replaced.

The drive is not reading disks or responding.

Make sure the disk being used has no visible damage. If it does not, make sure the disk can run on a drive like this. Some disks have specific copy protection that prevents them from booting on regular optical drives. This drive does not have the capability of reading Blu ray disks.

The drivers for your optical drive are what allow the optical drove to run and communicate with the computer. If there is anything wrong with them, check for updates for the drivers, or reinstall the drivers. To access the drivers on a computer, go to device mangers, then go to selected by devices and find the optical or CD drive, selected and see if there is any updates or errors with them. If there is, update or reinstall them.

This is very rare, and it will require you to install a new optical drive. You can find a replacement guide here.

There is a software issue or the keys are stuck

Dirt or other debris accumulating under the keys of the keyboard can cause them to stick. To solve this problem, you must clean out the spaces underneath the keys. First, try using a can of compressed air to blow away the dirt. Make sure the air is emitted in a focused stream from the can, then direct the stream into the gaps between keys and the laptop. If the keys still stick, you will have to remove them from the keyboard to remove the debris. Be very careful when doing this, as it is easy to break the mechanism that holds the keys in place. Once you have safely removed the sticky keys, clean out and dirt you find, rinse the key itself, then reattach it to the keyboard.

If your keys do not stick, but the laptop does not respond to your keyboard inputs, your keyboard driver software is likely out of date. Assuming you are running Windows, simply go to start>settings>windows update>update and security then click update all. If you are instead on apple, go to apple menu>app store>updates tab then click update all.

A laptop without electricity is no use to anybody.

The most likely reason your laptop does not charge is that no electricity is getting to its battery. First, check to make sure your laptop charger is in fact plugged into an outlet and into your computer. Next, make sure that the outlet your charger is plugged into actually works. Try plugging in other devices you know work like a lamp. If the lamp doesn’t turn on, this is likely to be your issue.

As a battery is charged and drained it will, over time, lose more and more of its ability to hold a charge until it no longer functions as a battery anymore. At this point, it won’t matter how many hours you leave your laptop charging, it will never hold a charge. This is when you should replace the battery. You can order a new battery online, or head to a local electronics store to purchase it. Make certain that you order the battery for the correct model of laptop.