Particular embodiments described herein provide for an electronic device that includes two or more displays and a BIOS. On startup, before the premem state and MRC initialization of the boot process, the BIOS causes power to be enabled to two or more displays. A display engine determines if a hot plug for each display is asserted and for each display where the hot plug was not asserted, the path to the display where the hot plug was not asserted is closed. In an example, the BIOS communicates the signal to power enable the first display and the second display after general-purpose input/output initialization during the boot process. After the premem stage and MRC initialization are completed, the first display and the second display are both configured to begin to display pixels.