hp pavilion not booting

i told a friend of mine that i'd look at her laptop before she gives it to the hacks at cc for the issue of her screen not lighting up. i don't believe it is the vid card. i think the pc is going straight into sleep mode upon boot. all of the lights are staying lit when i hit the pwr button, and i can hear the hdd start to wind up, but immediately stops. the three lts in the rt corner of the front that i assume represent the sleep timer (clock), the power (lightning bolt), and the hdd (disks), flash on, then the hdd lt goes out when the spinup sound stops, almost immediately after boot, and the timer lt stays on. i'm wondering if the piece is going straight into sleep mode. this is an hp pavilion dv2000. out of curiosity, i pulled the two sticks of ram and booted, trying to get boot error beep codes, but none chirped. any suggestions are appreciated, but any replies to this will not be seen until tomorrow, as i'm off to work. tx in advance. ~s

You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus.
- Mark Twain

it is though if it boot right into a blank screen. what I would first check is with a boot CD (linux, WinPE, etc), if it does not do it, then the video card is fine. Check also safe mode.

tx, dehcbad, but i tried a disk, no go. it just never gets to the point of loadin the os. i think it is going right to sleep, or the processor fan is dead in which case it won't load, due to potential suicide if it does w/o a fan. my friend hooked it up to an ext monitor and that didn't lite up so i think this is a pwr setting that i need to cancel somehow. ~s


Nothing happens until something moves.
- Einstein

if with a boot disc it does not work, it is not power setting from the OS. BIOS usually don't have that setting, but it is very possible that it might be an overheating issue. I would start by checking the fans. They are usually a little cumbersome to reach, but they can be reached and replaced on most laptops. I had a desktop to fix once, that the system would not boot because the CPU fan was lose, and it would not even load the POST screen.
Open the laptop, and check if you can turn it on with the fans exposed to see if they turn.