Accidently disabled display adapter on Surface laptop 3 with broken screen

Question

I bought a secondhand surface laptop 3 which has screen issues (black screen, sometimes black screen with horizontal white lines). I was able to connect an external monitor to have a look at the system and see if I could figure out what was wrong with the screen.

When looking at device manager I wanted to click on update driver for the display adapter but I accidently clicked through disable adapter and straightaway lost the image on the external monitor.

I have tried restarting, tried using a different external display, tried to start the laptop in safe mode, but no matter what I do the external monitor says no video input and the internal screen remains black.

Answer 1

Hi fghgfhhghfghgdhhhhhh,

Thank you for reaching Microsoft Community and I'm sorry to hear that the display adapter of your Surface laptop 3 was accidentally disabled.

Please try first to disconnect all peripherals connected to the Surface including dock, external monitor, USB drives and power supply then press and hold the power button for 20 seconds. Wait for around 10 seconds then turn the device back on and connect the external monitor. See if it displays now on the external monitor. If not, press Windows key + CTRL + Shift + B.

If still issue persists, try booting the device to its Windows Recovery Environment through these steps:

1. Hold down the power button for 20 seconds to turn off your device.
2. Tap the power button again to turn on your device.
3. A second after tapping the power button, press and hold the power button again for 20 seconds to force it to shutdown.
4. Press the power button again to turn on your device.
5. A second after tapping the power button, press and hold the power button again for 20 seconds to force it to shutdown.
6. Press the power button again to turn on your device.
7. See if the device restarts you to the Automatic Repair screen, select Advanced options if it does.

From the Choose an option screen, try doing a System Restore first.

Let me know how it goes.

Kind regards,

Marrion

Answer 2

Hi, thank you for your reply.

By the way this is a AMD Ryzen 5 3580U with Radeon RX vega graphics adapter.

I have already tried those suggestions before, but I tried again. Nothing appears on external monitor. For windows recovery environment I think that the laptop is reaching it as I don't hear the windows 11 startup sound, but external monitor still says no video input (cable and external monitor works with other laptops).

Would draining the laptop battery completely do anything useful in this situation?

Answer 3

Hi fghgfhhghfghgdhhhhhh,

I'm sorry to hear that the issue persists. I'm not sure if draining the battery of the device would work since doing a force shutdown on the device is just like taking the battery out of the device but we could try though.

If in case that draining the battery don't work, I suggest that we try doing a clean install of Windows on the device instead through USB Recovery. This option will reimage the entire device and reload Windows including the drivers and firmware. It is the most complete form of Reset and it will wipe out everything on the device. You will need also a 16GB/32GB of flash drive that must be formatted into FAT32 prior to downloading the Recovery Image. See the steps below for guidance.

How to Download, Create and Use a USB recovery drive

To download the Recovery Image:

• You'll another working device running on Windows.

1. Visit the page to Download the recovery image for your Surface
2. Sign in with your Microsoft Account
3. From the list of Surface devices available, select the device that you need a recovery image for
   Please note that while you will only be presented with devices that are currently registered on your account, you will also be presented with the option to get an image for a different type of device. If you try to use this option, you will be prompted to enter the serial number for that device
4. Download the recovery image using the button on the page
5. When the download bar pops up at the bottom of your screen, save the file in a location you will be able to find it.

 Format USB Drive:

• Note: Formatting a recovery drive will erase anything that is already stored on your USB drive. Make sure to transfer any important data from your USB drive to another storage device before using it to create a Surface USB recovery drive.

1. Insert your USB drive into the USB port of your PC.
2. From the desktop, open File Explorer
3. Tap and hold or right-click on the USB drive and choose Format
4. Select FAT32 as the file system and enter a Volume label to name the USB drive, such as RECOVERY, and then tap or click Start
5. Tap or click OK to erase the contents of the USB drive
6. Tap or click OK when the format is complete

Create a recovery drive:

1. On your Surface or PC, open recovery image that you downloaded by double-clicking it or right click then select Extract and then Extract all.
2. Select the USB drive you formatted earlier for the location and click Extract.

Use a USB recovery drive to reset your Surface:

1. Shutdown the Surface
2. Insert the USB recovery drive into the USB port
3. Press and hold the volume-down (-) rocker
4. Press and release the power button
5. When the Surface logo appears, release the volume-down (-) rocker
6. Surface will start the recovery software on the USB recovery drive
7. When prompted, choose your language options and keyboard layout
8. Select Troubleshoot
9. Select Recover from a Drive. Choose Remove Everything and Fully Clean the Drive. Recovering this PC.
10. If prompted, select Repartition the drives
11. If prompted for BitLocker Key, tap Skip this Drive

Kind regards,

Marrion

Answer 4

Hi,

Thank you for your response.

I've tried the above, even tried changing the SSD card and then installing OS, but no matter what I do nothing appears on the external monitor. Seems like really need the laptop internal screen to work to solve this. Just going to have to resell it.

Answer 5

Hi fghgfhhghfghgdhhhhhh,

I'm sorry to hear that still issue persists even after changing the SSD of the device. We'll respect the decision of just selling the device. I'm really sorry for this unfortunate event. Thak you though for spending time here in the Community with us.

Kind regards,

Marrion