My custom-built PC has had intermittent problems connecting to monitors ever since I received it, but now it has stopped displaying anything at all. Someone suggested updating the drivers, but I cannot see the BIOS or operating system well enough to do that. Is there a way to update the drivers without a working display, or should I be checking for a hardware problem first?
3 Answers
More details would help narrow this down: the full PC specifications, graphics card, monitor model, cable type, and whether the screen is blank from power-on or only goes black when the operating system loads. Check for motherboard diagnostic LEDs or beep codes, try another monitor or cable, and test another graphics-card slot if the board has one. If the PC is clearly booting but only the display is missing, the graphics card itself could have failed.
Drivers usually are not involved until the operating system starts loading. First figure out whether you can see the POST or BIOS screen. If there is never any image at startup, the problem is probably hardware, a cable, the monitor, or the way the display is connected—not a driver issue.
Check where the monitor cable is plugged in. If you have a dedicated graphics card, connect the monitor directly to one of its ports rather than the motherboard. You can also try a single monitor with a different HDMI or DisplayPort cable. If the processor supports integrated graphics, testing the motherboard video output may help, although it might need to be enabled in BIOS.
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