[SOLVED] My two monitors suddenly stopped getting a signal during boot, so I can't see the BIOS screen (nor rEFInd) anymore ?

[baksoBoy]

My monitors have always worked perfectly in terms of displaying the bios screen (and rEFInd) during boot, however suddenly they just stopped doing this. The only things that I think could have caused this was either when I changed the stands for my monitors, where I unplugged the main monitor without turning it off first (although I don't see how that could have caused anything). I also made sure to not acidentally press any of the buttons on the monitors, but it is possible that I might have acidentally done this. Although even if I did, I don't really see how that could have changed how the monitors act during boot (in case it is relevant, I use
2 x AOC E2770SH monitors). The other possibility as to what could have caused this would be when updating packages in Linux, as updating stuff seems to be very janky for me for some reason (using Pop!_Shop with Pop!_OS).

I have seen two other posts relating to the same issue (this and this), however I'm not sure how relevant they are to my problem as both of them seem to center around Windows 11, whilst I use Windows 10 and Linux Pop!_OS, where the issue started to appear when using Pop!_OS. As of right now I am on Windows, as I am unable to boot into Linux, so if there are any steps I have to go through to fix whatever is going wrong with my monitors during boot, then they will have to be done through Windows.

I don't know what information is relevant, so I am copying the information given in the first post I linked:

Motherboard: MSI Z170A-S02 (MS-7998)
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K
1st monitor: VGA
2nd monitor: HDMI

If there is any information that you need which I didn't provide then please tell me.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

I would try and see if you can perform a system restore if the OS update on Windows 10 caused the issue. Latest BIOS version for your motherboard?

 

[baksoBoy]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

I would try and see if you can perform a system restore if the OS update on Windows 10 caused the issue. Latest BIOS version for your motherboard?

Thanks!

I'm pretty sure that a windows update wasn't the cause for this. However if it is still of any relevance my "BIOS Version/Date" is "American Megatrends Inc. 3.70, 27/07/2016", and the
"SMBIOS Version" is "3.0" according to the System Information program. I apologize if you were asking for something else. I haven't really done stuff like this before so I am not entirely sure that I provided the correct items.

 

[baksoBoy]

I tried rebooting whilst plugging my monitors into different ports, and I found out that for some reason if I plug the monitor that uses HDMI into my DisplayPort (with a HDMI adapter), then I AM actually able to see the BIOS during boot. I don't know how this stuff works, but it makes it seem like it is the specific ports on my GPU that are the issue, where the HDMI and VGA port don't work during boot, but where the DisplayPort works.

 

[baksoBoy]

The issue has for the most part been solved. How did I solve it? I basically didn't. It practically solved it self for absolutely no reason.

I noticed that when plugging my monitor that used HDMI into my DisplayPort with an adapter, that monitor DID start displaying stuff during boot. Monitor 1 uses a VGA, and monitor 2 uses a HDMI.

Now that I was able to boot into Linux, I noticed that my monitors were flipped, due to changing the port that monitor 2 was using from HDMI to DisplayPort. So I tried swapping the cables that plugged into the monitors, so that now monitor 1 was using HDMI and monitor 2 used VGA.

After rebooting, the universe basically glitched, because I don't know what else the fucking reason could have been for this, but monitor 2 was still able to display stuff, despite all I did was swap the ends of the cables that went into my two monitors. So now all of a sudden the VGA port on the GPU was able to display stuff during boot, despite me thinking that the issue was that only the DisplayPort was able to show stuff during boot. As I booted into Linux the monitors were STILL FLIPPED somehow???

Considering how nonsensical the events have been thus far, I decided to try out and switch back to the ports that I have always used, where monitor 1 uses the VGA port, and monitor 2 uses a HDMI port instead of the DisplayPort. Lo and behold, Now monitor 1 shows stuff during boot, almost as if this problem never happened.

I'm not entirely sure if it works as it did before this issue, since monitor 2 only starts displaying stuff at the very end of the boot, and my memory isn't good enough to know if it always acted like this, or if it usually started displaying stuff earlier during boot, however as it stands right now it does not affect me.

I really don't understand what is up with my system. For some reason it's as if I just have a debuff in real life that makes me 20x times more likely to experience bugs that no one has ever gotten before, where no one knows how to fix them. This is by far not the first time I have gotten bullshit like this to happen.

If anyone is looking at this 15 years into the future trying to solve this exact same problem. I hope that the complete random sequence of stuff I did is somehow able to solve your problem. If not then that fucking sucks. I have absolutely no idea what you should do.