How can I turn off a Laptop Screen in ESXi 5?

[VMESXI5User]

I installed ESXi on my Dell Studio 1555 laptop so that I can play around with it (I'm a student btw). It works great except the screen is always on. I was planning on leaving my laptop on so that I can run some servers on it, but I don't want to have the screen on all the time. I tried looking for a setting in my BIOS to turn off the screen, but didn't find any. Is there a way to do this?

Thanks in advanced.

[idle-jam]

what i can think of is to turn your monitor to the lowest brightness hence blacking out the whole screen ..

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Welcome to the VMware Communities forums.  I can't speak to your specific model of laptap, but my Lenovo will turn off the screen when I close the lid.

Dave
VMware Communities User Moderator

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[VMESXI5User]

Yes mine will also turn off, but it will lock all the heat between the keyboard and the lid. I'm trying to avoid that. Thanks.

[bendany]

I have the same issue. I am running esxi 5.1 with lenovo thinkpad t420. when I close the lip, the backlight is off. but the lcd message remains. after half an year when I enter BIOS. I found the LCD is burned.

[sparrowangelste]

Ouch that is some burn in.

[bendany]

Finally I find a workaround. it works on my T420 with esxi 5.0u2

your hardware has to support vt-d. both motherboard and cpu.

turn on vt-d in bios, and then make onboard vga as pci passthrough device in esxi configuration. after a reboot, the esxi will freeze as dead at some point, don't panic, it still running.

remote login via vphere client, assign that pci passthrough device to any virtual machine(one is enough). when that virtual machine is powered on. the screen will turn blank.

although the vga passthrough will never work, but we get what we want: screen is blank. will never burn LCD anymore.

after that you will find a way to turn off the backlight. such as close the lid. or something others.

drawbacks: you can't use console anymore. if you want to restore. just delete that pci passthough entry, make it NOT passthrough and have a reboot.

[LichinLee]

It's work.

Thanks a lot.

XDDD

But my esxi crash when the vmmachine of mounting graphic controller turn on.

maybe my Laptop CPU dose not support vt-d or 'coz the  graphic controller compile in CPU.

PS.
It's support VT-D.  Maybe I need  a Independent Graphic Card.

Intel® Core™ i7-3540M Processor
(4M Cache, up to 3.70 GHz)

---------------

Finally I find a workaround. it works on my T420 with esxi 5.0u2

your hardware has to support vt-d. both motherboard and cpu.

turn on vt-d in bios, and then make onboard vga as pci passthrough device in esxi configuration. after a reboot, the esxi will freeze as dead at some point, don't panic, it still running.

remote login via vphere client, assign that pci passthrough device to any virtual machine(one is enough). when that virtual machine is powered on. the screen will turn blank.

although the vga passthrough will never work, but we get what we want: screen is blank. will never burn LCD anymore.

after that you will find a way to turn off the backlight. such as close the lid. or something others.

drawbacks: you can't use console anymore. if you want to restore. just delete that pci passthough entry, make it NOT passthrough and have a reboot.

--------------

[adam2adam]

Hi,

I'm just wondering if you have a T420 i5-2520M as the other person has Intel® Core™ i7-3540M Processor (4M Cache, up to 3.70 GHz) seems to have an issue.

Kind Regards.

-----

Finally I find a workaround. it works on my T420 with esxi 5.0u2

your hardware has to support vt-d. both motherboard and cpu.

turn on vt-d in bios, and then make onboard vga as pci passthrough device in esxi configuration. after a reboot, the esxi will freeze as dead at some point, don't panic, it still running.

remote login via vphere client, assign that pci passthrough device to any virtual machine(one is enough). when that virtual machine is powered on. the screen will turn blank.

although the vga passthrough will never work, but we get what we want: screen is blank. will never burn LCD anymore.

after that you will find a way to turn off the backlight. such as close the lid. or something others.

drawbacks: you can't use console anymore. if you want to restore. just delete that pci passthough entry, make it NOT passthrough and have a reboot.

[esxi5FTW]

I found another work around. I have the exact same issue, but with a Dell E6410. I opened up the case and disconnected the lcd connector. This model was so easy to open. With the help of Youtube, I searched for: how to disassemble dell e6410

I only disconnected the LCD connector which was held on by two screws on each side of the 1 inch connector, nothing else. I taped the cable so the metal parts don't short anything out, and routed the cable to an area that was empty. In my case it as the area under the Display port output. I powered the laptop up, had a ping going and saw it come online. Connected via vsphere client and everything works as expected. if you needed to reconfigure or do anything with the laptop, just connected the VGA connector during boot and you'll be fine. Otherwise a quick reconnect of the LCD connector would take less than 5 mins.

Now I don't have to worry about burning out my LCD.

[IanChrisD]

I'm running ESXi 5.5 (build 1892784) on a Dell Latitude E6400 with P8600 cpu @ 2.4GHZ integrated mobile 4 series GPU. I want to run ESX host continuously and care about low idle power use and heat dissipation so that the fan never comes on.  I found as you have done that console is permanently running without screen blanking and this keeps the integrated intel mobile 4 series GPU continually active. I followed exsi5TFW's suggestion above and disconnected the LCD panel from the motherboard which saves a watt or two and stops burn in. However even with the LCD disconnected the greedy integrated graphics card is running at full power and taking 10watts of power.

These things I have tried.

-  disabling the GPU in the bias however it is integrated and I cannot.

-  edited the /etc/X11/xorg.conf to enable blanking but it will not allow changes to be saves even when I override permissions.  There is no xset function for screenblanking. VMware must have removed it.

- tried /etc/init.d/xorg stop - it will not stop.

When I run the laptop under puppy linux and set screenblanking using my electricity measuring device I can see immediately that 10watts of power is saved.  With screen blanking the GPU can see that there is no work to do and immediately go into low power mode.

We should be able to control this, so we can power save or those users running ESXi under a virtual machine can turn off the screensaver for convenience.

Anyone have any ideas?

[hdaz]

There is a much simpler way to do this....

First plug in an external monitor start up to at least the BIOS or the point ESXi says press "Shift O" press "function key and F7" which changes to the external monitor, continue to boot up all the way till ESXi is fully loaded. Now you can unplug the external monitor and can not change the monitor back with "function key and F7" and the Thinkpad monitor is totally turned off...

Sure this work pretty well with other brands as well, only tried so far with T430.

Cheers

[adam2adam]

That's a clever idea!  After you unplug the external monitor, the laptop screen is still off even if you close and open the lid, right?

-----

First plug in an external monitor start up to at least the BIOS or the point ESXi says press "Shift O" press "function key and F7" which changes to the external monitor, continue to boot up all the way till ESXi is fully loaded. Now you can unplug the external monitor and can not change the monitor back with "function key and F7" and the Thinkpad monitor is totally turned off...

[TheChrisK]

Check the BIOS for display settings and/or "unobtrusive mode". Unobtrusive mode is disabled by default but when enabled, you can turn all light and sound emissions off with Fn+B. This essentially turns the screen, keyboard backlight, etc... off. I'm running ESXi on three Dell Latitude Laptops with this feature enabled.

[Richard2000]

I don't know about other laptops but Dell has a unique feature when the laptop lid is closed and a WOL signal is passed, the screen will not power on.

1) With the laptop powered off, ensure the lid is closed.

2) Then send a WOL (wake on LAN) signal to MAC address of the laptop.

The laptop will boot and the screen will be off.

There is one drawback, I have not been able to get the screen back on until the system is rebooted.

Also, there are a lot of free GUI and command line WoL utilities out there.

NOTE:  you may have to enable WoL in the BIOS.