[SOLVED] Laptop black/frozen screen when drivers are installed

[nooneisback]

My 4 years old clevo finally kicked the bucket, but I wonder what exactly failed. I tried starting it up, only to find that the screen would freeze during log on, with weird artifacting during windows startup (when drivers load). Thinking that my windows install got corrupted, I made a clean reinstall and the problem seemingly went away, until I installed the drivers again. I then tried disabling the discrete GPU, but the same happened with the iGPU, except it would just show a black screen with a white line at the bottom.

The PC runs just fine using "microsoft basic display driver" (no installed nVidia or Intel drivers). When it doesn't display anything, I can turn the display on and off, as well as put it to sleep and wake it up. Sounds also play when I trigger sticky keys.

I wonder if the power delivery is dead. Didn't notice any dead components when inspecting the board thoroughly.

Specs:
i7 7700HQ
GTX 1070

 

[Lutfij]

Model/SKU for your Clevo laptop?

Seems to me that the laptop has a corrupt/dead GPU in it. If the laptop has the GPU on a standalone PCB, then perhaps you can try and replace it to get the laptop back it's old self. As for the iGPU only, the issue could then be that the motherboard is the issue and needs replacing. These are assumptions since not all laptop's are designed/built the same way hence why I asked for the laptop's model/SKU to narrow down the innards.

 

[nooneisback]

Model/SKU for your Clevo laptop?

Seems to me that the laptop has a corrupt/dead GPU in it. If the laptop has the GPU on a standalone PCB, then perhaps you can try and replace it to get the laptop back it's old self. As for the iGPU only, the issue could then be that the motherboard is the issue and needs replacing. These are assumptions since not all laptop's are designed/built the same way hence why I asked for the laptop's model/SKU to narrow down the innards.

It's a P650HS-G, and the GPU is soldered to the board.

 

[nooneisback]

A bit of an update since I'm still trying to figure out the details.

For some weird reason, the GTX 1070 works perfectly as long as I use an external display through the DP ports, while the built-in display works in a pass-through mode with Microsoft Basic Driver, but has no brightness control and is too dim for comfortable use. I was planning on reflowing the GPU as it is useless for a portable device but now I'm just confused as to what even failed here.

 

[jonnyblatt]

Did you ever get this fixed?

@noonieback - I have the same exact issue, same exact model machine, GTX 1070 and everything.

I've tried everything, re-install Windows, all different version drivers, DDU everything, even running Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC now, can't figure it out.

Has to be firmware/hardware related at this point. I even get the same white line... and basic drivers work for the internal display.

 

[nooneisback]

Reposting it here if anyone else needs it.

I partially solved it by setting the GPU mode to hybrid in my BIOS and installing nVidia drivers without the Intel ones. That way, my GTX 1070 handles the rendering, while Microsoft Basic Display Adapter handles the actual output. It works in most applications. Only Furmark seems not to be able to detect the GPU properly. If that happens, connect an external display, set it as your primary and disconnect it. GTX 1070 will remain as your main display device. Then you can set it to sleep to keep it like that.

Apparently one of the solder balls for the iGPU cracked under the CPU. A better solution would be to get it resoldered, but I doubt I'll be doing that any time soon.

 

[nooneisback]

Finally solved this after 2 years. xrandr --verbose on Linux gave me a final hint as to what's actually going on. glxinfo and vulkan-info told there were no problems with the drivers, but xrandr (it gives detailed info about connected monitors by reading their EDID) gave complete nonsense. MonitorInfoView confirmed my suspicions. And looking through other EDID bin files online for this display made me realize this particular model is just defective and prone to EDID corruption, which in turn makes the drivers and OS confused as to what resolution your built-in display has.

To solve this problem, extract your EDID using MonitorInfoView as a bin file.

Import that bin file into EDID Decode to check how messed up it is. If it's just the resolutions at the very end that are messed up, you can work on this bin file directly; otherwise, good luck finding a compatible bin file (I found mine on this github page. You need to convert that hex string at the beginning into a bin file using something like this page.).

Install an EDID editor. I used AW EDID Editor since it's free. Import that bin file. Go to the very bottom, into the detailed descriptors. Delete block 2, 3 and 4. Check block 1 if it matches the specs your display should have. File > Save as > make sure it's a bin file. DO NOT OVERWRITE THE OLD BIN FILE IN CASE SOMETHING GOES WRONG.

Install an EDID flasher, like this one. Make sure you select the correct display, and flash the new bin file. If it tells that it couldn't find a compatible display, try connecting an external monitor, that usually forces it to load the built-in one too. If that doesn't work, uninstall all GPU drivers and start Windows in safe mode.

If it tells your monitor is write-protected, there isn't much hope on Windows. You can force Linux to load the bin file instead of the actual edid through grub or xorg.conf.

TL;DR: The displays on older clevos are defective and will get their EDID corrupted over time. You need to reflash the EDID to fix this permanently, or somehow find a way to load it in your OS.