Is there any way to use this laptop without the internal LCD?
Good night,
I've had several issues with this laptop, but one I couldn't fix due to local availability of parts was when I accidentally broke the LCD cable (while trying to fix another issue, which I managed to fix successfully).
I could find a cheap replacement, but well, it was a cheap replacement: it worked for a while but then it burnt together with the display.
But honestly, I never really wanted to get this cable: I wanted to use it headlessly before I bought the third party replacement I mentioned earlier.
But something I noticed is that the laptop shuts down after 15s~ or so if the internal display is disconnected. This is extremely annoying, as the laptop does POST and I can access (& mess around with) the BIOS setup just fine. I can even boot into SupportAssist and do stuff there (as I don't have any OS installed in my drive at the moment) after connecting an external display.
Is there any way to disable this check for the internal display? I've tried to look for both software and hardware (as in like shorting certain pins) solutions, but couldn't find any. The best thing I could find, for another Dell laptop was to bring the display controller internally. I can see the logic behind this, but I cannot do that as I don't have any working LCD cable.
I have a feeling this has to be possible, as this is clearly an artificial limit (which I have a feeling would have been really annoying during internal development at Dell), but I'm not really sure of how to go about this.
Thank you.
Is this a good question?
@tinybluesapling since you are not having an OS installed the turning off will be performed by the firmware in the BIOS. Check the BIOS for an option to make the external display the primary display.
by oldturkey03
@oldturkey03 It wasn't a fun experience, but I looked at all the obvious settings in the BIOS and I can't seem to find anything related to that. The best I could find (and the only setting in the Video section) was to reduce the brightness (which I tried to set to 0%), with no avail.
by TinyBlueSapling
@tinybluesapling SInce you have no OS the shutoff is performed by the BIOS. I wonder if it is possible to do what you are wanting to do, once you have an OS installed. Possible in settings on the OS that would allow you to set the external as primary display.
I know Win10 remembers the video settings on startup. You would need to enable "Second screen only" Hold down the Win key on the keyboard and press "P" 4 times to do so.
by oldturkey03
@oldturkey03 I've tried booting into a GNU/Linux distro but it just sends a shutdown signal before I can even get to the shell. I've tried setting "IGFX - Boot Type" to 0x4 (EFP) and "Active LFP" to 0x0 (No eDP) in the BIOS with grub-mod-setup_var (as these are hidden settings) but no dice.
by TinyBlueSapling