Could it be the driver?

[somewhereman]

i just flushed windows completely and have only linux lite on an older dell laptop,
it never occurred to me that there might be an issue running an hdmi to our 50" hd tv to watch the odd movie on kodi

but i tried the settings-display and plugged in the hdmi cable,
and boom, the display window instantly recognized the tv, i thought this was going to be a breeze

nope, i tried every setting available to make it come up on the tv
and then whatever i chose (i believe it was the tv as output) my screen went blank

reboot, nothing
good thing i still had lite on a thumb drive, so i booted that up and looked for answers
try ctrlf2, ctrlf10 or ctrlaltdel, was all i could find
ok, reboot from hard drive, nothing again
but ctrlf2 brought up a login option (username, password), so some success
unfortunately i am a green horn and had no idea how to bring up the actual user interface (if that is the right term)

finally, for whatever reason, i simply rebooted with the tv hdmi attached to the laptop,
and success, it was on both screens
we watched the movie then made sure the display output was set to the laptop screen
now the laptop is on the normal screen (and my wife is not saying, that is what you get for monkeying around with operating systems)

i hope this helps