Display Problem
 

I recently had my HP laptop's internal display go blank. I am currently running an external monitor. It works fine in command line but I can't start the gui anymore. Everything worked fine before the display failure. It tries to use the internal display exclusively. I am running Fedora 16, 64 bit with Gnome and am using the Nvidia drivers from the Nvidia site. I've tried searching the web but have not found an answer to my problem. Any suggestions?

If my laptop were giving my such a problem, I'd take it to a computer repair shop and have the graphics card checked out.

If it still under warranty, take it or send it to a licensed repair facility to check it out and repair as needed.

You could also try this: boot a liveCD (other that Fedora). If graphics work, you problem lies within Fedora. If graphics don't work, the problem is NOT in Fedora.

I have the same kind of problem, but not yet in Linux... on an older laptop also. I couldn't get the native drivers to work for the internal Nvidia-display. But: with a new install with standard-VGA-drivers (winXP) I got it to work and install (only 800 wide though, lot less options and very slow). I suggest trieeing that with a life-cd. After that, I installed an external USB secondairy displaycard that works faster and has better resolution. So, actually the system has 3 display posibilities: the internal defective screen, the external laptop-screen and the best external screen over USB. The external screen is not working during boot-time though, so I have a display-switch to switch between the normal external display and the USB-external-display.
By the way, in the past, I repaired some HP-laptop-displays that went 'blank': only the backlight didn't go on anymore. A little disconnecting the cables inside and the display went 'on' but only not visable. Working with an external light shows it works and then you can connect the external display on the normal way with the native-drivers in many cases.

I hope this will help (I still need to find some Linux-display-drivers for the USB-external-display... not high on my priority-list at this time so still working on XP on that station).

Elvin

I have the computer set up to dual boot. The external display works fine in Windows and in Fedora run level 1 or 3, just not in Gnome. It's not a driver issue. What I'm really looking for is a way to tell xserver to use the external display only. The laptop is a couple of years old and is not in warranty.

In that case: how do the special keys (like FN-F4 / FN-F5) on the keyboard interact with your display-driver and gnome? Do they have any reaction on the screen-setup?
On my system, the properiatairy-drivers for the display - with laptop screen - need the internal screen to work to start-up and if running they can switch after starting between the multiple displays on the same card. If they don't start correclty, the external display is switched off and since the internal display is not showing it keeps black.
So, what do the keys do after Gnome has started and what does the system and Gnome and the drivers do after you have (hardware) disconnected the internal screen (many laptop-screens-adapters then just use the external display since noticing the internal screen is just not connected). Of course for this disconnecting, you need some fine screwdrivers but less then to dismount the entire screen (which you can do later if you want). When I remember right, your display-cable to disconnect is on the left upper-side of the mainboard, so you just have to open that part of the case to access it.
By the way, normal hardware rules exist so turn everything well off, disconnect accu-packs, power-imputs and so on if you want to test this way.
There is probably some other tweeking on software-level possible but you might want to disconnect or remove your not-working screen anyhow don't you?
I'm wondering: does the screen give any light (in total dark) at startup or does it stay black the whole time? In that case the screen might just still work, you just need to put a light behind it to see.

FN-F4 and FN-F5 do nothing. You are right, the display is still working just no backlight. I'm going to order a new display inverter to see if that might be the problem since they are cheap and fairly easy to replace. I was hoping I could just use the external display in the interim. I thought there would be some file I could tweak to make this happen.