M17x R3 - Display not working

So I somehow messed up my working display on my M17x R3.

I have a GTX 780m which was working fine in the laptop, but last week I went into the BIOS to check to see what options were available regarding the CPU but made 0 change to the settings. Upon reboot the laptop would not pass the post screen. When I researched similar issues I saw a suggestion to the user to pull the GPU from the system to allow it to post. This worked for me and I was able to get back into the bios and windows fine.

A few days ago I attempted to put the 780m back into the system, prepped the bios by setting gfx to peg, disabling hd audio and disabling integrated gfx. Upon reboot the display would show nothing, no beeps or any other odd behavior and the hdd lights indicated activity. I tried many different options to get the display to work, reset bios, pull gpu, reset bios with gpu pulled etc. with no success. I was afraid the system was completely fubar, but connecting an extranal monitor via hdmi provided a windows screen. I attempted to reboot to see if I could see the bios but it is black screen on the external monitor until the windows login.

I could use any advice to deal with this, I'm not sure if my issue is display (which was working fine) or something died in the mobo? Ty for input and help.

Just1tree

 

I'm assuming you don't have your old GPU to check to see that another card will work?....

Usually you will get a beep code if the system detects a hardware issue. You'll have to use the process of elimination.
1. No display with 780M installed on PEG
2. System working fine running on IG
3. External display working with 780M on PEG

I don't know if elimination works here as it makes no sense......

If there are no beep codes and the HDD lights are activated then my guess is that when the 780M is installed the system thinks that an external display is connected even when there isn't one.
Here is something I found earlier today when looking up a similar issue on an M17x R4 that I may be buying soon that only displays to an external. There is a solution down the thread. It may not work but worth a try.

https://forums.tomsguide.com/thread...urn-on-but-works-with-external-monitor.20581/

 

Thanks Max,

I reread my post from the other day and saw that I forgot to mention that when the 780m was removed, I was getting 6 beeps.

As an update, today I hooked up a VGA cable to a monitor vs hdmi and again reached the windows desktop. I rebooted the system and spammed F2 to try to get into the bios to see if it would display on the vga monitor. Initially I saw nothing on screen but I pressed the function screen button to see if I could swap the display and did get the bios on the external monitor. I checked my settings and set them to what I "thought" was correct and saved settings to reboot. The very next boot there was 8 beeps and now no windows. Which upon a quick google as to 8 beeps seems to indicate that the lcd has actually failed. I guess my option at this point is to try to find a used lcd off ebay or are there any other ideas?

 

So I fixed it somehow

I played around with disconnecting the lcd cable to see if the pc would allow me to boot with it disconnected. Still 8 beeps. Turns out there is another lcd port to the right on the board of where the lcd cable was so I tried to use that port and upon powering on there is a solid white screen!
Knowing that the LCD was at least getting power and a signal I began to try other things. I went ahead and removed the 780m, along with the battery and the cmos battery. Next boot I tried without cmos battery gave 5 beeps. Main battery was still installed but I put the cmos battery back in, same 5 beeps. Pulled and then re-inserted the battery and bam bios post on screen to the LCD.

What is interesting at least now as i have the bios up is how so many of the settings remained without the cmos battery present. Is there a 2nd battery that I'm not aware of? The date time is still correct.

Glad i got it working tho... and now to try to figure how to correctly reinstall the 780m

 

Ok further update for anyone interested. Tried reinstall of 780m but no display issue returned. This time having learned from previous tests I was able to get into bios by changing the display to external vga while in bios and reset the output to SG - removed the 780m and now the system is working again. I'm not sure what changed to make the 780m incompatible with the system but that's where I am I guess at this point so I will have to sell the 780m and possibly replace it with another 7970m which seemed to work pretty well before.

 

Yeah it does sound like the GPU is the issue with the 6 beeps, hopefully not the MXM socket. The BIOS will only usually reset if you pull the CMOS battery and jump the motherboard pins with a screwdriver or similar. You usually get a 5 beep code once after re-installing the battery but them the system sorts itself out.
When you thought you had it working, I'm assuming the machine was set to IG so it was not detecting the 780M.
If you can boot using SG with the 780M in, what does it show in Device Manager? If it only says Intel 3000 then the GPU is probably dead.
Also, have you tried disabling driver signature and re-installing the modded driver?

 

Hey Max,

The 780m is still functional, as when I had re-installed it (and the lcd would not output video) I was able to switch to external montior via vga and saw in bios NVIDIA present. System was also able to boot to windows and showed 780m present via nvidia drivers. The problem at this point is that if the 780m is installed and I select PEG for graphics display and disable integrated graphics solution there is no video display on the LCD.

I suppose I could try to do clear of bios by removing cmos and jumping the motherboard, and then try to use recommended settings for 780m followed by re-install to see what happens.

 

That could be your best bet. Everything seems to be functional so it could just be settings/software