Forcing HDMI output on broken port

[pipboy325]

I’m working on a little project for my kids setting up a local game server using a broken laptop with Windows 10 I had sitting around. Due to damage, the laptop display and HDMI port are both broken. I’ve been able to install the drivers for a USB to HDMI adapter using Windows Narrator and then was able to install NoMachine and then connect to it with another Windows 10 desktop.

The issue I’m having now is that in order for NoMachine to actually let me see the laptop screen, it requires the USB to HDMI adapter to be plugged in, otherwise everything is black. Ideally, I’d love to be able to access the laptop without relying on the external adapter, especially since the laptop connections are loose and finnicky. Since the HDMI port is broken, a dummy HDMI plug is out of the question. Is there any digital workaround that I could use to trick the laptop into outputting video to an output that doesn’t exist?

[Britgirl]

Hi,

NoMachine is designed to work out-of-the-box on headless machines, nevertheless, in some cases users can experience a black screen when connecting to the remote host. This can be triggered by multiple factors, such as the GPU model, the graphic card driver or the program which uses the GPU for rendering.

I’m afraid we can’t do anything to fix this, but you could try using a different capture method by adding this line in node.cfg on the server side:

DisplayServerExtraOptions “-nodxgigrab”

and restart the server afterwards (go to Settings -> Server -> Server status -> Restart server). If that doesn’t help, the only option is keep the screen connected when using NoMachine.

[Author]

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