Laptop display works in linux only

[lk5671]

Hello,

i have a weird problem with my laptop display. Not long ago i closed the lid while a headphones cable was in the way. There is no visible damage but a "scratch" can be seen on the display when turned on. I have an intel CPU and an nvidia GPU and dual boot with windows 10 and ubuntu. Since that incident the display only works in ubuntu (and kali, and possible other linux distributions). In windows 10, bios, grub, during boot logo the display is pitch black.

I'm not sure if it's related, but before that, the display would occasionally freeze on Windows 10 turning partially black and showing lines of various colors. This could usually be resolved by either restarting or going into the sleep mode. Just before the freeze, the screen would twitch once, and after that, any time i hovered the mouse over a button or a link, the picture would become pixelated.

In windows 10 the display is shown as inactive and in the device manager its marked as unknown device. Each time ubuntu is booted the brightness is reset to the minimum but can still be adjusted to the regular value

It would be easy to say that the display is dead and needs replacement but i would still like to know why it happens and if something could be done to fix it. My best guess is that the display short circuited and went into some kind of protection mode, which is somehow ignored by linux-based systems. If so, how could it be repaired, as apparently the panel itself works just fine?

[ToastyX]

I don't know what would cause that unless Ubuntu only uses the NVIDIA GPU and something is wrong with the Intel GPU or the connection to the Intel GPU.

[lk5671]

(04-05-2025 08:03 PM)ToastyX Wrote:  I don't know what would cause that unless Ubuntu only uses the NVIDIA GPU and something is wrong with the Intel GPU or the connection to the Intel GPU.

Thanks for the reply

Ubuntu uses the integrated Intel GPU and only powers on the Nvidia GPU for high performance tasks as it should be with Nvidia Optimus. The same happens in windows as well (as can be seen using an external monitor). So nothing changed in that regard. But yeah, the display stays black in windows even when the Nvidia GPU is active, so i don't think the problem has anything to do with it