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Yesterday I have connected external display Asus VW192C to my laptop Dell XPS 14-L421X via HDMI-to-DVI-D cable. And it worked perfectly fine from start. The day after, Asus screen went blank showing "No signal". Every time I connec/disconnect the cable or power off/on the display it says "No signal". And I didn't change any system configurations meanwhile.

To troubleshoot the problem, I have tried to connect laptop to TV (hdmi-to-hdmi) - it was fine. I've tried to connect a different laptop to the display via the same cable - worked fine as well. So its obviously something on system level, either Windows or graphics drivers. Also it seems that Windows still see the external display (I can move mouse pointer away from the main screen in Extended mode into "dark" screen), but there's just no signal.

Any ideas? What else to try?

PS. My laptop has 2 graphics cards - GeForce 630M and Intel HD 4000 using NVidia Optimus technology. I have updated to latest Intel and NVidia drivers, still didn't help.

PPS. Although I shouldn't have updated (from Intel support): "our Intel generic graphics drivers from the Intel website do not support using both Intel Graphics 4000 and NVidia GeForece GT630M". Nevertheless, it should not affect connectivity to additional display.

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Do you have a single cable with HDMI Male on one end and DVI-D Male on the other end? If so, then it's not a proper HDMI-compliant cable. The HDMI consortium only certify HDMI female outputs, HDMI female inputs, and HDMI-male-to-HDMI-male cables.

Buying real HDMI-certified gear, with logo, helps. If you can, try a real HDMI cable, with an HDMI female to DVI-D male adaptor.

I learned this lesson at work, where someone responsible for the projectors in the conference rooms had bought a bunch of non-HDMI-certified hybrid cables that went from mini DisplayPort male to HDMI male. They rarely worked. They were later replaced with real HDMI certified cables and mini DisplayPort male to HDMI female adaptors, and that solution worked reliably.

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  • It is indeed some cheap noname cable and that's what I thought at the beginning as well - crapy cable, died after 1 day of using. But I've tried it with the other laptop and it went smooth. That's what puzzles me. Thanks for hint anyway
    – nazikus
    Commented Oct 25, 2013 at 23:48
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    besides, I wonder how cable "certification" can influence so dramatically? I understand with analog signal, there's a need to screen properly, cancel noise, etc. But with digital signal? I can only think of certified reliability in terms of physical endurance (against bendings, etc), but not in terms of signal quality. Its digital, right? Either 1 or 0.
    – nazikus
    Commented Oct 25, 2013 at 23:55
  • You were right. I've bought a DVI adapter (goo.gl/WTVSh2) to my regular HDMI-HDMI cable (not sure if my cable is certified though) and it worked. But its really odd. I wonder what is the actual explanation for such behavior.
    – nazikus
    Commented Oct 31, 2013 at 16:20
  • Glad to hear you got it resolved. My thoughts w.r.t. your comments: Certification is a sign that the manufacturer cares about quality. HDMI is very high bandwidth over a lot of pins, so strict adherence to the spec is necessary. Unlike analog, which often degrades somewhat gracefully over low-quality cables, digital either works or it doesn't. Your knockoff-HDMI cable probably didn't meet HDMI standards, so it degraded the signal too much for the receiver to make sense of it.
    – Spiff
    Commented Oct 31, 2013 at 20:28

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