No VGA output. any ideas?

[apple]

I have an i7 E6440.

My problem is that I can't get any VGA output. The monitor amber standby light goes green so I presume something is happening but the display stays black.

I tried the options I get by pressing the fn & F8 keys as well as the options in the screen resolution menu. Tried other monitors too with no luck.

The monitor worked fine on my old Dell M1330 - just plugged it in & it worked on that one right away.

HDMI output works fine. Is it necessary to switch from HDMI somehow?

I updated intel & AMD video drivers & the BIOS.

I checked the manual - no info there.

I looked in the BIOS settings & nothing obvious stood out.

Any ideas?

I guess other Dells will be similar so even ideas from other laptop owners would be appreciated too.

Thanks for any replies.

[mw86]

Is there a discrete graphics vga output and an on board graphics vga output? I remember having to disable one in the past. I hope someone has some more insight.

[apple]

Is there a discrete graphics vga output and an on board graphics vga output? I remember having to disable one in the past. I hope someone has some more insight.

it has intel on board graphics & amd discrete graphics i believe.

how might i go about disabling one or the other - i looked in the bios but can find nothing to change.

any one have any thoughts?

[mw86]

So is the HDMI input on the discrete graphics card and the vga is off the motherboard from the on board graphics? Can you hook up two displays while in windows and see if you can set it to duplicate displays. Then maybe if you can get it to show the display you could make it the primary display and remove the other HDMI connection. The on board graphics may not be active in the presence of the AMD gpu. Been on laptops for awhile so a bit rusty.