completely new to Raspberry Pi here. The fact that nothing is working here is frustrating me to no end, please help.
So essentially I've followed every website tutorials' instructions that I could find on installing NOOBS to a 16 GB Micro SD card. I've formatted the SD card with SDFormatter, extracted the NOOBS zip file, copied all the zip files onto the stupid SD card. When I attempt to power the Raspberry Pi via inserting the card, it immediately displays a red light.
Lights problem: if I just power the Pi and insert my SD card, the red lights stays and a green light flashes once. In every other case I've tried, such as including the HDMI cable to a computer, there's just the red light. Nothing is booting, loading, anything.
Information: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B V 1.2
SD Card: 16 GB PNY Class 10 MicroSD card
POWER SUPPLY: Model: DCAR-052A5 || INPUT: 100 - 240 V AC : 50-60 HZ / 0.5A || OUTPUT: 5V-- 2.5A
A regular ass HDMI cable, to hook up to a laptop monitor.
So far based on what I've researched on this issue I need to install some OS or something... either that or the board is screwed up in some way, which would be very very bad.