Hey everyone! I'm trying to salvage my 13-year-old Dell Inspiron 15R 5520 from becoming e-waste. I've had a few issues with it:
Initially, the screen wouldn't display anything despite the laptop booting up normally. I managed to fix that by replacing the RAM and doing some power resets. However, the screen was also showing red spots, indicating it was failing.
Next, I dealt with severe overheating by cleaning the insides, removing non-functional speakers, and replacing the thermal paste—now it runs cooler! I even upgraded the RAM to 16GB (2x8GB DDR3L) and swapped the HDD for a 500GB Crucial SSD, which boosted performance.
Now, I decided to remove the screen completely because of its poor condition. But here's the problem: since then, I can't get any display on external monitors. They recognize the signal but remain blank. I've tried multiple displays with no luck. I'm stuck! Any thoughts on how I can get this working again?
1 Answer
It looks like your laptop might still need the internal screen connected, even if it's non-functional. The BIOS usually expects it, and without it, the external monitor can’t initialize properly. Consider reconnecting the screen cable, booting up, and then try using Fn + F8 to cycle through display outputs. After that, check your display settings to set the external monitor as primary.
Thanks for the tip! I tried reconnecting the screen and cycling through the display options, but still no luck. The external monitor remains blank.