Screen not turning on, no external display image, laptop still boots, help?

My (almost exactly) 3-year-old MSI GS43VR with a GTX 1060 6GB GPU and a i7-6700HQ CPU with optimus is... I hope not done for? I haven't used it in a few days because I've been giving my new daily driver, the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro 15", a spin. My plan has been to keep the GS43VR for gaming. But then this happens.

Earlier, I turned my GS43VR on and everything seemed to work fine at first--but I don't think it made it past the MSI logo before the screen went totally dark, and it's stayed that way ever since. I've tried plugging it into my external display, and I do hear the usual brief "ding" from the display that recognizes that something has just been plugged into it, but nothing shows up on it. I've restarted my notebook multiple times by holding down the power button to shut down. But every time it starts, I get no image at all, whether on the internal screen or an external display.

To be clear, the laptop itself still turns on--the backlit keyboard comes on, and the MSI power button with its indicator light turns on (the indicator changes color depending on whether the iGPU or dGPU is working). I know from the indicator light that for the first split 0.1 seconds after turning it on, the laptop's iGPU is running, but then it immediately switches over to the dGPU. If I leave the laptop on long enough, the dGPU fans will eventually kick on too (the CPU fans stay off).

So what's the diagnosis? Is my dGPU fried ? If so, is there a way I can brute force the iGPU to keep working throughout the boot process so I can at least still get some use out of this laptop? Is there anything else that might be wrong and that could be solved?

 

Yeah it really sounds like a bad GPU. One suggestion is using the keyboard to enter BIOS and reboot. You'd have to consult the manual. First see if you can enter BIOS and restart by pressing F2, F12 (I think), and Enter. If you did it, the power LED should go off and on.

Once you confirmed you can enter BIOS, you can attempt to switch to iGPU through the BIOS menu blind. You will have to track your keystrokes and refer to the manual. If you mess up, you can always revert to BIOS defaults by pressing F10 or pulling the CMOS battery.

I don't really know what else to tell you, good luck!

 

Thanks a lot for your reply. I'll try that, though I've already tried blindly getting to the desktop and I don't think I've been successful, as I never get any sounds from it. It'd be nice if I could at least get it working off of the iGPU, so I'll give it a shot. But based on what you and others have said, it sounds like it might be over for my laptop.

 

It just depends on whether the BIOS has the option to switch to integrated graphics, if so you should be able to in theory. MSI should have a manual that lists all the BIOS options, and hopefully it has screenshots. You can ask the MSI forum for a screenshot of that BIOS option, then use the keyboard to try and change it. Good luck!

 

I thought it was odd that I couldn't get any sound of the computer either or seem to blindly get to the desktop. Turns out the problem wasn't the GPU at all, but rather a defective RAM stick that was refusing to let the computer POST. Now that it's gone, my GS43VR is back up and running.