Inspiron 7500 freezes when not connected to external monitor via HDMI

This problem just started occurring a few days ago, and I believe I narrowed down what the source of the issue is, but I am wondering what is causing it and how I can fix it. My laptop completely freezes and requires forced shutdown when it is not connected to an external monitor via HDMI. I am also getting occasional blue screen crashes when not connected to an external monitor. Every time I reboot it it freezes or crashes again within a minute or so. When it is connected it works perfectly.

I have installed all the up to date drivers and windows updates, and reset the bios to the default settings, but that didn’t seem to help.

Any idea why this might have just started happening and how I could fix it?

Thank you!