Hard to explain, Alienware 17 Ranger 980m upgrade issue.

OK, so I found a 980m pretty cheap on Ebay from a local business that parts out laptops and sells the parts. This card I got seems to work perfectly so far except for one thing... When Win 10 boots from a fresh start, the laptop screen stays off. Not like back light is off off, but off entirely. External monitor works fine. I also figured out that if I make my external monitor the main display I can log in just fine but the laptop panel stays off.

Now, I have figured out a way around it and have managed to get the screen back on, but this works until the computer is restarted. So if I need to restart it again, I wont be able to see anything unless I hook up an external.

I can get the laptop monitor to work every time so far by doing this:

I go to display settings in windows 10:


Scroll down to the bottom where I can set multiple displays:


Select "Show only on 2" and then choose to REVERT the changes:


Doing this makes the laptop screen turn on like normal. This persists through putting the laptop to sleep but not on a restart. Any ideas on how to fix it? I have Win 10, PURE UEFI mode enabled, a 60hz panel, and Intel GPU disabled. Thank you in advance.

EDIT: So I'm pretty sure I have a G-Sync 980m in my non-G-Sync Alienware 17 Ranger.

 

The gsync might be a problem so you can flash the bios with the prema 980m vbios. Outside of that consider getting a 120hz panel. The upgrade works really well that way.

 

I've been searching high and low for info on a vbios for an 980m G-sync 8GB model out of an MSI, but no luck so far.

 

Does the Fn +F hot key for display do anything? You might have to press the down arrow and return. Also try close and open lid.

 

Fn+F1 looks like it's the display key, it opens the Display properties like in the pics I posted above. I havent tried closing and opening the lid after a complete restart tho, I'll have to give that a shot.

 

So starting up the Laptop, closing the lid and going to sleep, then opening it again works for getting the main display work. Awesome.

 

Cool, the Fn key you want is for internal/external panel, this one is on F7. Sounds like somehow the panel is defaulted to off??

You should find that if you set the panel close option to 'do nothing' then you will probably find that you can simply close and open to trigger it on - no need for sleep hopefully...