Another no video no beep post :(

[raWill]

I swore I signed up for these forums before. Please don't skip over me as this is my virgin post

I've been a professional computer builder but no longer work in the industry so I have no access to spare parts.

I have a system that has been stable for about a year now and over the course of 2 days the system started throwing up a black screen (but there was still a video signal) and the system would not recover. This happened mostly during 3D applications so I figured it was getting a little warm and there was a fair bit of dust that I hadn't cleaned in a while.

I got the system back up and I now get no video, a single sick sounding beep after power on then nothing after that (there is now no video signal).

I've done as much diagnostics as I can and without a 2nd motherboard or PCI-E video card I can't test to see what the problem is thoroughly enough.

Long story short I have decided it is either the video card that has died or the PCI-E port on the motherboard.


Thanks for any advice in advance.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

There's just not enough info to be sure. The GPU could certainly have failed but, it just as easily could be the PSU. If I'm understanding correctly, the machine posts (thus the beep) but no video? Have you checked the monitor?

 

[raWill]

Hi Mangus,

Yes I have tested the system on both my monitors on both DVI connectors.

I am getting power on all fans, the 8800GTS fan is spinning so the PCI-E power is working correctly.
I have a iP965 board, I swapped the ram around but without another DDR2 motherboard I cannot test them.
CMOS is cleared.

I have a feeling it's the motherboard so I think I will buy a cheap i945G and kill two birds incase it is my video card at least I will have my computer back.

I think this laptop has 500rpm drives if that is even possible
I apologize for the lack of information in my opening post but I just didn't want to fill it up with something that would be scanned over.

 

[raWill]

And just to add one thing I noticed - It appears to be loading all the way into Windows. So it's not halting on video nor memory.
Hitting the power button after the hard drive activity stops the computer will perform a standard o/s shutdown.

 

[OCChronic]

Can't you find a used regular PCI video card somewhere just to rule out motherboard? If it boots to windows without a video screen then it's most likely the RAMDAC's on the videocard are pooched. I think the mainboard is still good.

 

[raWill]

Hey thanks for the reply I didn't think about RAMDAC.
Previously all my cards have failed on memory, seems to be a given for most cards. (Unrelated)

Anywho, no no spare PCI card, that would be ideal in this situation since my last upgrade the cpu sockets, gfx slot and ram slots have changed - just the way pcparts companies plan it.