Disabled integrated graphics card, black screen

Etrofder

Commendable
Sep 8, 2016
8
0
1,520
I goofed and disabled the integrated graphics on my stock Alienware x51, thinking that was how I could force it to use the Nvidia card. Apparently not how that works. Obviously screen went black. I've gone over the common fixes pretty thoroughly. I use a tv as my only monitor, and I've tried switching between the three hdmi ports on it, and both the graphics card and motherboard ports.

I've opened her up, and disconnected the battery, as well as the standard cmos reset to try and reset the bios to default. I get no signal to the monitor whatsoever, so I can't boot in safe mode or access bios settings. The last thing I'm going to try next is move to another tv monitor that works for the other two computers, but I'm not holding my breath.

I'm at my wits end with this, but any sage advice would be appreciated. I don't want to have to take it into a shop to sort it out, because I'm usually quite handy at these things if I know what to do.
 
Solution
All right, fixed that by switching the bios boot mode to UEFI from Legacy, and got to my desktop without any (noticeable) problems. Thanks for baring with me on this. I'll have to figure out why the monitor went from working fine to not at all when I changed a computer setting later. For now, I'm calling this a success. Thank you!

Etrofder

Commendable
Sep 8, 2016
8
0
1,520


Sorry, I should have been more clear. Already tried that. There's no signal regardless of what combination of ports I use between the PC and the monitor.
 

Etrofder

Commendable
Sep 8, 2016
8
0
1,520


Progress. HDMI cable works fine, and I get visuals to access the bios menu. Course, now I'm getting an error telling me to 'reboot and select proper boot device', which I imagine is because I messed with the internal workings without consulting the machine spirits first. Looking up info on this new quandary, but still taking helpful suggestions.
 

Etrofder

Commendable
Sep 8, 2016
8
0
1,520
All right, fixed that by switching the bios boot mode to UEFI from Legacy, and got to my desktop without any (noticeable) problems. Thanks for baring with me on this. I'll have to figure out why the monitor went from working fine to not at all when I changed a computer setting later. For now, I'm calling this a success. Thank you!
 
Solution