I’m writing from my phone’s as my computer is out of commission. I was using Garuda like normal. I was on librewolf and the screen suddenly turns black. I tried shaking the mouse, but it wouldn’t wake up. The day before I was rendering a video on kdenlive, which did crash multiple times and I had to close my laptop a couple of times to get it working again, but it was up and running otherwise. It was working just fine after I long finished rendering the video. It’s the only thing I can think of that could have screwed with my system, but it was a full day after I finished doing that so I’m at a lost. Librewolf was the only application open at the time the display cut off. The computer itself is booting up and working, the lights are on, it takes charge fine, the battery is fine, not a hardware issue.
The only monitor that will display my laptop is my brother’s TV, and I have no idea how to scroll, so sorry about the inxi, it’s a video you can view here. My laptop’s display doesn’t work, even console won’t show up. I have no idea how to boot back into windows, either. The Acer Predator logo never appears, and I can’t get into my bios. The only thing I can do is switch to the text console. All I see is a black screen on there, as well.
I got another error, but by adding --force to the end, I was able to update and replace everything. However, apart from that, there was no other output.
I’ve looked on the forums and tried this, but that hasn’t worked, either.
Any help is appreciated, thank you! Sorry if the formatting of this post is bad, my phone is pretty old and struggles to work too. I’m probably cursed when it comes to technology.
I’m stuck there. I used systemctl reboot --firmware-setup to go into BIOS and change my boot priority order, but I still can’t see anything. ^^;
As for the Internet, I thought I would have been connected already since I was connected to my Wi-Fi prior to the screen going black. I tried reading the arch wiki on how to connect via WiFi, but I wanted to be sure there wasn’t a simpler way to reconnect.
Sorry, I should be more clear. The display on my laptop won’t turn on, it’s just a black screen. I don’t get the Predator logo when booting up, and I don’t see the Garuda Linux or Windows load screen. The only thing I can do is wait about 20 seconds and Ctrl+alt+f2 to pull up the text console. Nothing displays on the laptop, but the TV will display
Garuda Linux 6.12.4-zenl-zen (tty2)
And then prompt me to log in.
Edit: I’ve tried pressing the usual buttons while the computer restarted, F1, F2, F11, F12, heck, I’ve pressed every button on my keyboard, but I don’t see anything. The HDMI doesn’t have a signal until I restart and wait for Linux to load, so I’ve no idea if I’m in a menu. From there it’s a black screen until I pull up the text console.
it looks like defective hardware, corrupt BIOS or incorrect BIOS settings.
Did you boot Windows before and a BIOS update came in via the WU? Acer expressly warns against this and recommends only the BIOS updates from the Acer support page. Your garuda-inxi says “UEFI Insyde v. 1.16 date: 11/02/23”, but with a faulty BIOS update, anything is possible.
If the Acer splash screen is not displayed, you cannot get into the BIOS and the internal display is not activated - then something is already going wrong at the hardware/firmware level.
Can you switch between the internal and external display with Fn+F7?
During hardware initialization (after switching on the laptop), the eDP (embedded DisplayPort to which the internal display is connected) is initialized BEFORE the HDMI port. It looks like this is failing and only the HDMI port is being initialized/activated. Xorg is not loading because there is something wrong with your graphics hardware.
Try the following:
Disconnect the external HDMI monitor/TV, turn on the laptop and check whether the backlight of the internal display is activated (this is clearly visible in a (semi) dark environment).
If so, then the internal display was recognized and activated - so you can (almost) rule out a defective eDP / defective display.
You have dual boot with Windows, so try to boot Windows blind (with an external monitor/TV connected).
Acer w/ Insyde-UEFI: turn on the laptop and hammer away like crazy on the “F12” key (BIOS boot menu/boot override) for about 10 seconds → then press the “down arrow” key once for the second boot entry (hopefully windows) → press “enter” and hope that windows appears on the external monitor
If windows boots correctly: check in the device manager whether EVERYTHING is displayed there and without errors - especially the intel iGPU, nvidia dGPU and both displays (your garuda-inxi in the video shows both GPUs, but that doesn’t mean that both are running without errors).
Try to blindly boot a garuda live environment. If you haven’t changed the boot order in the BIOS yourself at some point, then the bootable USB stick should be in position 3 (standard would be: 1. Garuda, 2. Windows, 3. Bootable USB device, 4. PXE and so on and so on… purely theoretically ).
Same process as in point 2: switch off the laptop → connect the boot stick → switch on the laptop and trigger “F12” for about 10 seconds → press the “down arrow” key twice for the third boot entry → press enter and hope that the live.iso appears on the external monitor.
The question is whether the BIOS (F2) and the boot menu (F12) are even called up (corrupt BIOS). If you trigger F2/F12 for 20, 30, 40 seconds and can then call up the console, then you are definitely not in the BIOS/boot menu…
If none of this works because the BIOS/boot menu cannot be called up, then remove the NVMe (there should be a service hatch on the bottom - if not, you have to remove the entire bottom case). This means that the laptop can only boot from the connected USB stick.
Perform a BIOS reset (factory setting) blindly.
Acer w/ Insyde-UEFI: Turn on the laptop and trigger F2 for about 10 seconds → press F9 (load factory settings) → press enter (confirms the selection) → press F10 (save and exit) → enter (confirms the selection).
This is just in case your BIOS has a function to deactivate the internal display and/or deactivate the iGPU/dGPU. Remember that this will reactivate all the Microsoft stuff and change the boot order, etc. It could be difficult to undo the whole thing blindly - that’s why I advise against it for now.
*The times for calling up the BIOS/boot menu are generously calculated because you do the whole thing blindly, on average it takes about 5 seconds.
Yes i had this problem yesterday on my Desktop trying to change my resolution to HD instead of 4K and my computer screen went blank and the computer hang. This happened soon after an update where i had not rebooted yet. Not sure if that mattered, or caused it tho.
However it did not matter what i did after that, reboot, shutdown or snapshot, i had NO MORE SCREEN WHATSOEVER after the grub menu. And then, stuffing around, not even my grub menu any longer either. It would go on and then to sleep, time and again.
So i disconnected my monitor completely and turned it off by taken the power out. Then i started up my computer without monitor, and let the bios detect the no monitor bit. After which i turned my computer back off and rewired my monitor with another cable, just to make sure. i did have to do a snapshot, to undo the latest update, before i could boot into my Garuda tho, and redo the update again to get it to work again. It has been working fine ever since.
Have you tried an external monitor, to see if your laptop packed it?
Thank you so much for the advice! I ended up shipping it over to them and they got it last tues because everything I did didn’t do anything (I still haven’t received any updates, which leads me to believe it WAS a hardware issue ). I hadn’t logged into windows for about a month at that point. I decided to update bios then, so I don’t think it’s a bios issue.
I’ll keep this response logged in my noggin just in case God forbids it happens again, but I really appreciate both responses! I’ll update if they ever get to telling me what happened just in case someone else gets this same issue sometime down the road!
Edit: Hey all, thank you so much for the help! I had to call Acer to see what was taking so long on the repairs. They said something about replacing the LCD Screen and Motherboard, so turns out it was a hardware issue! I just wanted to update everyone!
).
). I hadn’t logged into windows for about a month at that point. I decided to update bios then, so I don’t think it’s a bios issue.