Chosen Solution
This computer is really important for uni, so please leave a reply with ANY information or other resource you suspect might be useful. Thanks! Two days ago while writing in onenote, the display on my 3 year old Surface Pro 7 just froze up with thick lines of digital noise covering a large part of the screen. After restarting the computer it can’t get past the Microsoft boot logo. Video output using the USB-C port is completely fine, but although it lists two displays, the OS shows the built-in display as greyed out (disconnected?). Tried: All types of force-restarting, draining battery, booting to BIOS (can’t display it) I suspect part of the screen is broken for some reason, but what puzzles me is the boot logo? Obviously the LCD isn’t broken if it can display the logo without problems. What I’m wondering now is what part of the computer is responsible for showing the Microsoft boot logo on the display? Is it the OS or BIOS? (In this case, this would mean the screen can accept a signal, right?)Is it programmed into the display board shown in this guide? In the second case, I suspect a screen replacement wouldn’t necessarily resolve anything if the display board has lost its signal in or out?
@chriiis Did you try this method to get into BIOS with a display? Since you have an external display did you try the diagnostic toolkit and checked if it showed anything? Not too sure re Surface models but on most PCs the video for the BIOS display and the maker’s startup logo is supplied by the BIOS chip via the IO chip and it is basic vga video resolution. Once it boots into an OS it is the OS that supplies the video signal information. As can be seen in this image from the schematic for the laptop the display is tied directly to the SoC IC (System on a Chip) which is a combination chip that handles everything (I couldn’t find a free download for the schematics but it’s still cheap enough)
(click on image)
