HP Spectre x360 Convertible Laptop Screen will not work without External monitor plugged in

[VW_Tiff]

We have two of these laptops and both within a week of each other started having issues with the laptop screen not working unless an external monitor is plugged in. Then BOTH the screen and external monitor show what they are supposed to. I've gone into BIOS and the screen without external works there and it will work when I exit, but eventually goes back to not working without the external monitor being plugged in.

I've downloaded updated graphics as well as BIOs from the HP website. I reset the BIOS to default settings.

There is not a restore point available to roll back to on the current one I am looking at - was hoping it was related to an update - but now can't put my finger on it or attempt rollbacks. 

This began last week on one of them, and this week on the other. Based on the timeline I feel it has to do with an update of some kind for two to do it so closely all of a sudden. This is very hindering and defeats the purpose of having a mobile computer when you have to drag an external monitor along with you to be able to work.

Any solutions out there?? Can someone assist or is anyone else experiencing this same issue recently with theirs? 
My last resort will be to do the Reset PC if I can't get anywhere with new ideas here or support. I just hate doing that because then you're starting over reinstalling all your programs, etc. So that will be the last ditch effort.

Thanks in advance!

[BeemerBiker]

If this just happened a week ago, see if there is a windows restore point from before that date.

If a restore works you should ask over at answers.microsoft or run the win11 feedback app and complain.

Another thought:  You might have 3 desktops instead of 2 and one of the desktops is blank.

Hold down the windows key + CTRL and press the left and right cursor and see if the blank desktop goes away.

[VW_Tiff]

The desktop wasn't an issue, there was only one shown.
I cannot roll back the two updates that ran on 4/9 and 4/10 on each of them. They are not in the uninstall option under the recently installed updates.
And when going to Retore/Recovery, there were no restore points given to roll back to unfortunately.

[VW_Tiff]

Update:
After more testing of theories, I do believe this is related to the sleep settings/components of the computer.
I complete a hard shut down by holding the power button down, then unplug the external monitor, start the laptop again and the screen works perfectly ... until you close the lid on the laptop or it goes into sleep. After it goes to sleep, the laptop screen is black and you have to plug in the external monitor for it to work again, then go through that whole process again to get it back up. I'll also note that in the device manager when I have the external monitor plugged in, there is no Generic Monitor driver shown in the Display Adapters listing, just the onboard/laptop one. And in the Display Settings though, you can see there are two monitors shown, and they identify correctly (even if I extend/duplicate the screen).

So I've found some triggers I am going to try to investigate further to see if I can come up with a better solution, for now I told the User to not close his lid, and if he needs to then save and close everything before he does and shut down instead of just shutting the lid, until we can find a fix. I've found a few articles and things to try, if any work I will post another update - if anyone has any other ideas to offer, please let me know. I'm listing below what I intend to try next.

*I already turned off the display sleep in Power settings already, so it shouldn't sleep unless he closes the lid on it now.

I plan to:

Change When I close the lid to Do Nothing (Power Option).
Disable Fast Start up (Power Option).

Disable Hybrid Mode (Power Option).
Run Power Troubleshooter to see if anything comes up.

Change "Shell" Registry Key as last resort if nothing above works.
Reset PC if nothing above works.

[BeemerBiker]

Some thoughts based on a test I just ran.  No solution, just something to think about,

From googling how refresh changes work,  i read that the monitors actually have to  be turned off to change the refresh.

On my two monitors, I set just one of them from 60 to 50ghz.

That turned them both off for about 3 seconds, not just the one I changed the refresh on.

Each monitor was on a different NVidia RTX card.  There should have been no need to turn the other one off just on account of the refresh.

The other monitor turned of because THE ICONS ARE TRANSERED FROM THE NON-WORKING TO THE WORKING.  The wall paper also had to reduce from a 2 monitor spanned image to a single image no span.  However this happens so fast it is just a guess I am making as I never see one on and the other off.

I do know that if I accidently disconnect one monitor the icon and the wallpaper take a while to rearrange and up until recently windows did not restore the icons when the monitor was reconnected.

Just thought I would through this out:  What would happen if the icons widgets cannot all fit on the smaller screen of the laptop?

[VW_Tiff]

We've not changed the refresh rate on anything.

The laptop monitor went black, so an external monitor was plugged in at that time to see if it would work, or if something more major was wrong.

These two users don't normally use an external monitor.

I don't believe it is the icons, because it will do it even after startup with nothing opened and what is there does not fill the taskbar.

I'll be working on my list later today and will follow up from there, but gut says it has something to do with the sleep function.

[BeemerBiker]

This might be useful

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebooks-Knowledge-Base/Diagnosing-sleep-problems-in-modern-notebooks...

[BeemerBiker · Accepted solution]

I was unable to find the exact specs on you laptop but it appears you have Intel graphics

Try updating using the intel support assistant

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/intel-driver-support-assistant.html

If you have the iris graphics chip then this is the latest driver

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/785597/intel-arc-iris-xe-graphics-windows.html

These have fixed similar problems.

[VW_Tiff]

I already updated the graphics and BIOS from the HP site directly. And neither changed the behavior.

[BeemerBiker]

Yea, but on several occasions the intel support assistant had newer stuff than HP.

For example this user got the blank monitor fixed with a driver from Intel

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Video-Display-and-Touch/Built-in-monitor-goes-black-on-discon...

YMMV