If video card goes bad, can I see the BIOS?

[Wedge1]

I am trying to trouble-shoot a notebook PC. After powering on, the laptop will try to boot up, but eventually cycles back off to restart and do it all over again. So basically, it is in an endless loop of restarting/shutting-down with absolutely no video being displayed (no POST or anything).

So I pressed F10 repeatedly to get to the BIOS after pressing the power button, and though I cannot see the BIOS screen, at least the laptop is no longer in an endless state of rebooting. So I am left wondering if I am actually in the BIOS, but just can't see it. It makes me wonder if the video card might be bad, but I am not sure if the video card is needed in order to see the setup screen of the BIOS. It a functioning video card is required, then I believe I might just have a faulty graphics card. If a video card is NOT needed to view the BIOS screen, does this most likely point to a larger problem, say, maybe motherboard isse related?

 

[dguy6789]

If your video card goes bad, you can't see the bios.

 

[Kakkoii]

If the GPU was just faulty, your system wouldn't be rebooting. It merely wouldn't display an image. And yes a GPU is not required to access the bios screen, only to actually see it. So there is most likely a bigger problem.

When did this start happening? After messing around with BIOS options?

 

[blanketyblank]

depends on how your video card is busted. I've had laptop gpus go bad on me before and usually it shows signs like distorted colors, artifacts, etc... Latest one was a sony which luckily had a hybrid nvidia chip so it can still be used by simply flicking the switch and using the intel chip instead. Try connecting to an external monitor as well just to make sure it's the gpu. With laptops the problem could be with the LCD as well.

 

[Wedge1]

If the GPU was just faulty, your system wouldn't be rebooting. It merely wouldn't display an image. And yes a GPU is not required to access the bios screen, only to actually see it. So there is most likely a bigger problem.

When did this start happening? After messing around with BIOS options?

I am not sure exactly when this started happening. It is not my laptop. It is owned by a friend who wants me to figure out what he should do with it.

I am inclined to think the motherboard needs replacing. The laptop is a DV9000 made by HP. A quick googling of this item reveals a high incidence of failures that HP took responsibility for by extending the warranty to owners who need a repair. I am just not certain the symptoms of this notebook match that required for the free repair.

A local PC shop owner already stated that a new motherboard was required, but I simply do not trust this guy's judgment as I have found his conclusions wrong on more than one occasion.

 

[Wedge1]

depends on how your video card is busted. I've had laptop gpus go bad on me before and usually it shows signs like distorted colors, artifacts, etc... Latest one was a sony which luckily had a hybrid nvidia chip so it can still be used by simply flicking the switch and using the intel chip instead. Try connecting to an external monitor as well just to make sure it's the gpu. With laptops the problem could be with the LCD as well.

I have tried using the VGA-out on the notebook to connect to my CRT monitor I use for testing. I get nothing at all.

 

[Wedge1]

Guys I just tried something on a whim, and it worked.

The constant rebooting seemed like a problem I have seen several times before. Typically, it seems that this is a RAM or PSU issue. This notebook came with 2GB of RAM (Hynix I believe). I took both sticks out and placed a single stick of Corsair RAM from my personal notebook into the one in question.

Viola. The computer booted up and the following message appeared in the lower right of the screen (just above the system tray as it does any time new hardware is recognized and successfully or unsuccessfully installed):

"PCI Standard RAM Controller
Device driver sofware installed successfully"

So am I right in assuming that the issue had to do with the RAM controller not agreeing with the previous sticks of RAM? i.e., compatibility issue? Perhaps 2 x 1gb sticks were too much for this HP laptop? Please throw me a bone here because I want to understand precisely what the root cause might have been.

Thanks for reading and offering assistance.

 

[mindless1]

The laptop used to work with the memory, yes? I think you have a motherboard chipset failure and replacing the memory simply flexed the board a bit so it has temporary electrical contact again.

I've had a different HP laptop, DV6000 that had the failure they replaced. It can happen as you described, system just doesn't turn on one day. They mention wifi card failure a lot but it's not necessarily that first, it can just not have video at all and unlike what one person wrote, it is usually NOT possible to access the bios besides seeing it, a typical bios will not proceed if it can't find a video card because it is designed to initialize video first and not proceed until it has, and when the video is the northbridge IGP, it's not just the video going bad it's the whole chipset which is also a show-stopper.