Laptop display is white works with external monitor

Dell Inspiron M731R

When turning on the laptop it has white screen at boot-up. I hooked up an external monitor(hdmi) and when it reaches the window 8.1 splash screen then the external monitor kicks in and everything works fine(laptop lcd is still white with vert and horizontal lines (I can kind of see whats displayed). But when I tried in safe mode the external monitor doesn't display anything. I can barely make out what is displaying on the laptop but when I try to project on to the external monitor I get a message 'your PC can’t project to a second screen. Try reinstalling the driver or using a different video card. 

Could it be an inverter for the white screen and driver for not projecting in safe mode? Reinstall the display adapter?

Thx