I don’t mean to be rude if this will come across as such but I just want to say firstly that I’m posting here as a last resort. I’ve already checked and rechecked several times the basic troubleshooting stuff that I can think and that you can see in most lists when searching for my problem.

Problem: My monitor shat the bed so I’m using an old Toshiba TV as temporary replacement until I can get a new one. But when I connected my PC to the TV with an HDMI cable, the TV doesn’t seem to be detecting it.

Not sure how relevant this is but I’ve considered for a bit that maybe my PC itself is having a problem too since I can’t seem to make it make any noise (i.e. blindly opening YouTube/my music app and trying to play any video/song). But after I was able to shut it down/restart it by blindly navigating through to the command prompt and running shutdown /s or shutdown /r, I guess it’s safe to assume that windows is at least booting up.

Basic check routines:

  1. Faulty HDMI cable. I can confirm that this is not the issue as I have brought the TV and the cable to a nearby electrician and he has tested both and confirmed they both work separately and together. Even brushed the ports just to be sure.

  2. Check Source/Input options. The TV only has three options: TV, Video, and HDMI. And I am certain I have selected HDMI. I even cycled through all the options because there isn’t much else I can do. I’m limited to the buttons on the TV since it no longer has any remote and I can’t seem to find a decent universal IR remote app. I remember easily using one back in my Nokia SymbianOS days. Now, all I find are non-functioning scummy ones or only works if you have a WiFi-enabled TV. Sorry for the rant.

  3. Try a different HDMI port. The TV only has one but I’ve tried connecting it through my Nvidia GPU (default) or through the motherboard and both didn’t work.

  4. Restart the devices and/or change the startup sequence. Didn’t work either.

  5. Make sure they’re plugged in correctly. I’ve gently wiggled and pushed at both ports several times now. If I do it any further or harder, I’m afraid I might actually break them then.

  6. HDCP Compliance. This is one thing I’m not sure I know how to check, but if it worked before, should this cause a problem when using a different output? Plus it’s an old dumb TV, is it possible that something isn’t matching? But how do I check for that or know what to replace?

  7. Update drivers/etc. I’m sure they’re up-to-date because I just did last week for a different thing. But I can’t do anything right now because I can’t see anything and I don’t have any more options to use for a display.

I’m really at my wit’s end which isn’t much to begin with so I’m hoping maybe someone who had a similar problem and found an uncommon solution might be able to share theirs. Thank you.