My built-in screen isn't showing up, even when we added more memory to our computer.
My built-in screen isn't showing up, even when we added more memory to our computer.
My built-in monitor is completely broken. It won't turn on on Linux, Windows, or even when I look at the BIOS menu. The only thing showing up is an external display I plug in. Here are the steps I took to get here, but first I want to say that I am not very good with computers. I can open a laptop and swap out its RAM and SSD; nothing else has worked on this machine before. My laptop is an old MSI GP 65 Leopard 9SE, about three years of age, so I decided to upgrade it anyway. Ten days ago, I changed the memory from 16 GB to 32 GB without taking the battery out (it was fine). Today, I took another piece out: a second m.2 NVMe SSD that only stored files and had no boot loader or anything like that. I swapped this for a bigger 512 GB drive that went up to 1 TB. For this time, I also removed the battery before installing the new hard drive. After putting it all together, I turned on the laptop but the built-in screen stopped working right away. That meant I couldn't see my GRUB menu (the list of options) at all, even though I knew how to enter into the system and pick an OS. The problems didn't stop there. When I got to Windows, only the external display worked. Instead of a normal login screen, it said "Something happened with your PIN and it is not available," which is really strange for me. After a few restarts, I finally got in using my password. But even now, the internal monitor still won't work. I checked the display settings and the computer sees the built-in screen but does not turn on it. I tried most of the things I could think of, but nothing fixed it. I know these events might seem like separate problems, but this is exactly what happened. All I did was swap out my hard drives after opening the laptop; I never moved any cables around. If you have seen something like this before and can help me understand why, please let me know in a previous question so I don't get lost again. Thanks so much for reading! (Note: On Linux side, none of my monitors work at all.)
It looks like it wasn't really about the SSD swapping, but rather a problem that has been going on for about a year. About a year ago, I took this laptop to a repair shop and they cleaned it out. They even fixed something with the display cable by putting it in a bad way (though it was still working). When I swapped out my SSD, I probably bumped or nudged the computer just enough that finally forced it off and broke one of the pins. I guess what you should learn from this is to always pick your repair technician very carefully.
Take everything out of your computer. Look at the wires behind it. Turn them off, then turn them back on again. Use a small light to see if you can see your desktop screen even though the room is dark. If it's still just very dim, something inside might be broken.
It looks like it wasn't the SSD swap, but an old problem from about a year ago. A repair shop cleaned my laptop back then and messed up the display cable (it still works). When I did the SSD swap, maybe I bumped it just right enough to knock one of the pins out. Guess what? It's better to pick your tech carefully.