Need a favor from the 7710 owners

That very well could be, but what mine was doing was from day-one-new, it was disabling internal video any/every time I updated the BIOS.They initially replaced the mother board and then called it fixed, but then it happened again with the last BIOS update, so they replaced the mobo and video card this time and now it all works.

This particular unit was literally one of the first units to roll off the assembly line and had a lot of problems - way more than just this video issue (USB 3 didn't work in all instances; docking didn't work; flickering video) . DELL engineers asked me to work with them to figure out what was wrong rather than returning it and I agreed. Glad to help where I can. They gave us a discount for this - a pretty good one at that.

So to recap, if you are having video issues with the BIOS in the attached config, you probably have a funky Quadro.

 

This is sort of contradictory unless you have made a change to the "graphics switching" setting in the BIOS. Is graphics switching enabled in the BIOS? Did you make a chance to this after you updated the BIOS?

If graphics switching is enabled, the Intel GPU is driving your laptop screen, not the NVIDIA GPU. (There is no way to change this while graphics switching is on — The NVIDIA GPU can handle rendering for particular apps but the output to the screen will always come from the Intel GPU.) If graphics switching is off, the Intel GPU is totally disabled and the NVIDIA GPU drives everything.

@ccvortex, did you happen to check the vBIOS version on your Quadro before you had it replaced? I'm wondering if your new card has a newer vBIOS. Dell has done this before (silently ship a newer vBIOS with a fix for something and not give any way for customers to upgrade aside from having the card swapped out).

 

I did not, sorry.

 

Not sure if it's relevant at this point or not, but I have the FirePro W7170m and I am able to turn off my switchable graphics in the BIOS, and have Dock Display Port checked, as well as Direct output mode enabled. I was able to use the internal screen, as well as the dock and have 3 additional monitors connected to the dock (1x VGA, 2x DP). Everything worked as it should for me. There should be no situation in which a BIOS config change of this settings disables the internal screen.

 

Right, I believe these issues are for the Quadro cards, at least as far as I have heard.