Predator Helios 16 -After an update from intel the main screen went Black

After an update from intel the main screen started flickering, after lowering the refresh rate, everything was working fine. After a couple of days, the main screen went black while the external display would turn on. The main display would come up after a couple of reboots and tweaking with some settings in the predator app, then a day later, both displays went out completely, a bios setting reset to default would make the secondary display work but now both are gone. After I changed it to NVIDIA GPU only from BIOS and the predator app after my last restart. I have tried all the reset options. Plugged the battery out and left it for a while as well but still no avail. A couple of windows interruption sent me to the recovery screen on the external display but then the windows would load up as I'd hear the sound but no external display. Now I dont hear the windows load up too. I can get into BIOS, as when I do some blind button press to reset to system defaults the system restarts. Alt+F10 sends me to recovery section of windows (again doing it blindly) confirmed because when I press down arrow twice and press enter it turns off. No acer services in my country, and getting it sent to the nearest country is not a viable solution due to multiple reasons. So open to any help and suggestions.

[Edited the thread to add issue detail]

Accepted answers

All comments

Puraw

Hi sq123

Since you can still access the recovery environment with Alt+F10, one option worth trying is the new Windows 11 feature that reinstalls the current version of Windows through Windows Update. This process keeps your apps, documents, and settings intact while repairing system files. You can find the official guide here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/fix-issues-by-reinstalling-the-current-version-of-windows-497ac6da-7cac-4641-82a5-f50398d879a0 Make sure the laptop is connected to power and the internet during the process. This may help restore display functionality if the issue is tied to corrupted system components.

sq123

Thank You for the reply, but I currently have no visual (main screen or external), everything I am doing is "blind" by pressing the buttons in the right sequence. And also the windows is not loading I believe as I hear no startup sound. So its probably stuck on a recovery loop of sorts.

So unless somebody can provide a guide on the button sequence to get a clean reinstall of the windows or any other solution that might solve this, you'll be a real life saver.

Puraw

Hi sq123

Since the BIOS is still accessible, this points more to a GPU driver or Windows startup issue rather than a complete hardware failure. Without any display output, you can try forcing Windows into Repair mode:

Power on the laptop and as soon as Windows starts loading, hold down the power button for about 5 seconds to force shutdown.
Repeat this process three times in a row. On the next boot, Windows should automatically enter the Recovery Environment. From there you can attempt Startup Repair or boot into Safe Mode.

If that does not work, the alternative is to create a Windows USB Recovery drive on another PC with the same Windows version:

On a working PC, go to Control Panel > Recovery > Create a recovery drive, or use the Media Creation Tool from Microsoft.
Boot your Helios 16 from this USB stick (press F12 at startup to select the boot device).
Once in the Recovery Environment, choose Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings, then restart and select Safe Mode.

From Safe Mode you can uninstall or roll back the GPU driver, which may restore normal display output.

sq123

From all the troubleshooting I have done it does seem like a GPU driver issue which started the problem but now all the back and forth has led to a bad windows which is stuk in recovery but as there is no visual output I can't really manouver much.

I'll try option 2. Hopefully that leads to something, I was just wondering if somebody on here is working with a predator helios 16 ph16-71 running hte latest version of windows 11 that can lead me to the exact button that needs to be pressed to go into a clean reinstall of the windows.

I did try going through with it using some online help but it gets nowhere.