[FIX] Black Screen, only external screen working

[Rayce]

Hello all

This is my first post.

Last time I used my SD was around 3 months ago and it was working perfectly.
Just recently I wanted to use it again just to notice that the internal screen stayed black. Trying system recovery (boot with Vol-&QAM) just as trying to boot into BIOS (Vol+) didn't work either. Only using a connected external screen seemed to work flawlessly. unplugging it kept the internal screen black.

After searching online I had noticed various other people experiencing the same issue, but with no fix. Some suggested that it was a hardware issue, but nothing was verified.

So I opened a support ticket here on Steam and was swiftly helped with various fixes I had already tried (recovery mode, BIOS, unplugging external screen).

The last resort, though, had actually fixed the issue. This is my TLDR recap:
1. Enable developer mode
2. Enable 'Show Advanced update Channels' in developer settings
3. Set OS Update to 'Main'
4. Apply software update and restart
5. Make sure that firmware has been updated to F7A0121 or higher
6. Force Power Off (Hold Power 15+ seconds)
7. Use Recovery mode (Vol- & QAM (...), Tap Power)
8. Wait 15 minutes

After this my internal screen magically worked again! That 'Main' OS update was from March 18th, so it's pretty recent and it's a high possibility that the fix worked with this update.

If anyone wants more detailed instructions I can quote the support response if needed.

[Icequeen87GT]

At what point in this process did you unplug the external screen?

[Icequeen87GT]

Originally posted by Icequeen87GT:

At what point in this process did you unplug the external screen?

Okay so I did this last night keeping it connected to the external monitor the entire way through (until after step 8), and it worked for me!

[spudthedestroyer]

Amazing this worked for me too!

I used Xreal airs as the external display and the screen flickers to life after completing step 8

[lokonel]

wooow it worked for me too thank you very much!!!

[[FSE]FireBelcher]

Sir! You have saved my steam deck! This worked perfectly, no RMA was required!!!

[󠁳⁧⁧⁧⁧ʻMelancholyʼ]

Attempted this & now neither the primary or external display work. Fans powering on & sound / haptics are occurring but can't seem to get into anything.

- The external display seems to be working again but no luck getting it to boot into bios mode so far & no luck getting the internal display to work

[HughMungus]

I did this and now my external doesn’t work lol RIP

[Adam]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.