No Video No Post but boots into OS

Triarius

Commendable
Jan 9, 2017
1
0
1,510
My dell precision M4600 seems to complete POST and load into ubuntu just fine, as it plays the startup sound once the OS is loaded, but at no time is anything displayed on either the laptop monitor or any external monitors (I have two) plugged in. If I clear the bios by removing the bios battery, it will display POST once, return error "system is not configured, please run setup" and allow me into the bios screen. However, regardless of which options I set (DELL doesn't provide much hardware configurability aside from I/O and disks) the next boot will return to the previous behavior.

My theory is that my GPU is toast. On first boot with unconfigured BIOS, it defaults to intel graphics, but then automatically detects the firepro 5100m and switches to that such that all subsequent attempts display no video. Is there anything i'm missing?
 
Solution
I would say you are probably right in the case of it being the graphics card/GPU that is the issue.

You could see if you can set the device to use the Intel for the time being, sometimes it works, sometimes not. That would, however, keep you going until you can replace the AMD.

You could try removing the AMD and see if it will default to the Intel. Or try booting in "Safe Mode" and it should default to the Intel.
I would say you are probably right in the case of it being the graphics card/GPU that is the issue.

You could see if you can set the device to use the Intel for the time being, sometimes it works, sometimes not. That would, however, keep you going until you can replace the AMD.

You could try removing the AMD and see if it will default to the Intel. Or try booting in "Safe Mode" and it should default to the Intel.
 
Solution