How to fix not being able to display bios on a monitor connected via DisplayPort

Have you recently built a new computer to find out that you can’t get into bios? You may be able to boot to your installable media or even Windows, but bios never displays if you try to enter it? Users that suffer from this usually can’t see the boot screen either (typically a logo representing the motherboard manufacturer). In fact, you may not see anything until the Windows login screen pops up.

This is a problem that has affected many people over recent years and not everyone seems to be fully “in the know” about how to resolve it. The solution, thankfully, is quite simple (assuming you can get into your OS, at least).

First before anything, you likely have your monitor connected to an NVIDIA graphics card via DisplayPort (DP) 1.3 or 1.4 with a PC that is using the UEFI boot mode (instead of legacy). Switching it to HDMI will likely resolve the situation (or switching to legacy boot mode). However, not everyone has the ability to switch to HDMI, and/or you might prefer DP over HDMI. You likely also don’t want to switch to legacy boot mode if it’s a new system, as you may want to (or eventually) support Windows 11 and the new security requirements. Finally, it only seems to affect NVIDIA cards. AMD (ie, Radeon) cards don’t seem to suffer from this.

So if this describes what you are going through and you are able to get into Windows, this simple fix “should” resolve everything for you (assuming you don’t have any hardware problems).

What to do!

Head on over to this page on NVIDIA’s website. This takes you to an “NVIDIA Firmware Update Tool for DisplayPort 1.3 and 1.4” that is designed to resolve these problems with DP.

Upon opening the update tool, it will warn you about the dangers of updating firmware. This kind of warning is always present with firmware updates. So don’t cut power to the system while the update is happening, else you may brick your graphics card. Let it completely finish before doing anything.

It will scan your system to determine what graphics card you have and if it needs the firmware update. If you are experiencing these issues, there is a strong chance that you need the update. If it says your card requires the update, let it update it.

Again, make sure you don’t interrupt the process. Don’t have any resource-hungry applications running in the background. Don’t interrupt it with a reboot and cross your fingers that you don’t have a freak power outage or anything.

The screen (or screens, if you have more than one) may flicker a few times as it works its way through the update. It will eventually complete, and you will be finished.

Now, reboot your system and see if you can get into bios. Or, simply let is boot like normal and see if you see the boot/load screen that comes up before Windows (again, usually some logo representing the motherboard manufacturer or the company behind the PC if you didn’t build it yourself). If you see the boot/load screen or you were able to get into bios, this means the update worked.

You should now be set with loading into bios anytime you need to via DP. We hope this short tutorial helps you out.

Models supported by this fix:

(Per NVIDIA’s website)

• NVIDIA TITAN Series:
  TITAN X (Maxwell), TITAN X (Pascal), TITAN XP
• GeForce 10 Series:
  GeForce GT 1030, GeForce GTX 1050, GTX 1050Ti, GTX 1060, GTX 1070, GTX 1070Ti, GTX 1080, GTX 1080Ti
• GeForce 900 Series:
  GeForce GTX 950, GTX 950Ti, GTX 960, GTX 970, GTX 980, GTX 980Ti
• GeForce 700 Series:
  GeForce GTX 745, GTX 750, GTX 750Ti
• Quadro Series:
  Quadro Maxwell and Pascal products may be impacted