No Video at POST, but Normal Once in Windows

[Fragmire]

I have a motherboard with on-board video (Intel 945G), but uses an ATI 9600 Pro on the AGP slot connected to an LCD panel via the DVI link. Started a few months ago, I would get no video signal at all until the system boots to the Windows welcome screen. Some more experimentation showed:

- the D-SUB output on the video card doesn't have signal until Windows welcome screen
- if I remove the video card entirely (thus enabling the on-board video), everything is normal and I get signal from boot through the on-board video D-SUB
- no video signal from the on-board D-SUB out while the AGP slot is occupied (expected behavior)
- changing the BIOS video priority (AGP vs. on-board vs. PCI) has no effect

I don't recall having done anything special when this started happening a few months ago.

Some updates from more testing today:

The problem seems to lie with the video card, though I'm not sure exactly how. This is what I did:

- Tried another video card (Radeon 9800 XT) and was able to see everything from boot all the way into Windows
- Tried another, much more powerful power supply, but didn't affect anything
- Tried my video card in another system and was able to see everything from boot all the way into Windows

I'm not sure if there is somehow some kind of incompatibility between my video card and my motherboard / BIOS, but I don't recall having flased the BIOS around the time this started happening. At this point, I'd appreciate any kind of suggestion or guess.

Thanks.

 

[Fragmire]

In case this is of any use, I have the following in my system:

Asus P4P800-VM (865G + ICH5)
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB
Intel P4 2.4GHz 800MHz FSB
x2 512MB Crucial DDR3200

 

[Zap]

I don't know why the problem would develop after a while. I saw something similar on one particular video card where the BIOS screen and Windows splash screen would be garbled as if the monitor (in this case a CRT TV) couldn't sync up to it, but yeah, after Windows loaded it was fine. I had swapped to that card for a while and then swapped to another card. It only did that with the one card and not the one previously or afterwards.

 

[Fragmire]

I don't think that's the problem I'm experiencing. What's happening is that my screen would remain blank after power-on until Windows loads (i.e. the XP "welcome screen" is the first thing I see on screen after power-on).

I just found something on Google Groups that seems to describe the same problem, but without any solution. Specifically, the resolution output by the video card is too high to be displayed (my LCD maxes out at 1280x1024). Does anyone know of a way to reset the boot resolution (which I didn't think was configurable before) on an ATI 9600 Pro?

 

[evojulz]

Hi, I am experiencing exactly the same issue. I too have an ATI 9600Pro that started mysteriously not showing POST on the primary monitor. I found if you have been using a secondary display it would display only on the other display and of course only if the video card was set to dual display. Even if you set the video card to single display it still won't show POST on the primary monitor.

I noticed if you use a CRT monitor you can turn the monitor off and back on again and it will show you what?s going on until the next part of the boot sequence when is looses signal again. But with an LCD you get nothing until Windows boots... this indicates it is not a resolution issue as indicated on other forums. Strange.

So, where to from here. I have been looking around but found no real solutions to this issue. I will try installing new AGP settings for the motherboard, but if that doesn't work we might be stuck with this plague. Let me know if you find a solution!

 

[Fragmire]

Interesting. I don't have an accessible CRT, so I can't test if mine exhibits the same behavior as what you described. I've been in contact with ATI support, and after barely trying on their side, they told me to send it in for warranty service (i.e. pay for a new card since it's already out of warranty).

I'm not sure exactly what's wrong because, as I said, my card works when I plug it into another computer, and another video card works when I plug it into my computer. It's all quite mysterious.

Do you by any chance have an Asus motherboard with the Intel 865 chipset?

 

[beserker15]

I'm not sure if it's anything like mine, but I have an x800gto2, and with my new lcd monitor with dvi, I don't see anything till windows either. However, my crt with dsub shows everything. I'm running dual monitor now so I don't care much, but it's odd.

 

[evojulz]

Hi Fragmire, na I did have the card on an old PC Company built mobo running an
Athlon 1.1GHz chip when it started to play up. I've just upgraded to an ASRock Dual939 STAT2 mobo running an AMD 3500+ and it still doesn't send the right frequency output until Windows (which indicates it's the card not the mobo and is why I was re-visiting the issue).

Still no luck, I have tried every possible configuration on the card including different versions of drivers, and now it looks like it's loosing signal on the s-video out because I only pick up a flicker on the TV. The card still works ok on the primary monitor so will keep using it until it dies and I'll upgrade to a PCI-E. Just means I have to steal back my old CRT that I donated to my partner as a secondary monitor for her laptop every time I want to go into BIOS.

BTW my new LCD only came with a VGA cable so I haven?t tried it with DVI but am not expecting anything new.

 

[evojulz]

Hi, just to tidy up, I got myself a DVI cable (that I noticed worked for someone else on a different forum) and now I can see all my PSOT info at bootup and can happily get into my BIOS settings and tweak tweak tweak!

Not sure if it recognised the DVI output as the secondary monitor (someone will probably correct me on that) but it's all go now. Hope this helps, try it out if you haven't already.

 

[Fragmire]

Not sure how related this new problem is to the existing one (i.e. no signal at POST), but I'm noticing video corruption issues in Windows, on my Radeon 9600 Pro, regardless of the player. This is a high-level summary:

* video flickers with thick horizontal white lines / blocks during playback, to the point where it is unwatchable
* so far, only video clips taken with Canon Powershot SD300 at 640x480 have the issue; video taken at 320x240 remain undistorted
* if I open Cyberlink PowerDVD and then playback the video in Windows Media Player, there's a roughly 50% chance that the playback would be fine
* this happens in Windows Media Player 9, 10, 11 (beta), RealPlayer, and QuickTime Player
* if I switch to the on-board graphics, the playback is fine; similarly, I've tried the same clips on other computers and they playback without issue

This is getting more and more weird. Perhaps these are signs of a failing video card? All my 3D games (Splinter Cell, Guild Wars, etc.) play fine, and there's no other issue during normal usage though.

 

[dustmann]

I have a similar problem. I know that with my monitor (apple cinema display) it is the monitor, it cant detect certain video cards at bios. I had this problem with my 9800pro when I flashed it to an XT bios. The bios was no longer displayed on the lcd, but worked fine on my old crt and a dsub lcd. I flashed back to the 9800pro bios, flashed my mobo bios and it worked fine. I'm sorry I cant help more, I can relate to how annoying it is though! Especially if you have a multi-boot setup like me. I had this problem on my 6600gt (same monitor dif comp) and I noticed that I had to shut down completely and change the dvi cable while the computer was off otherwise it wouldn't display the bios. I guess it's just really picky

 

[kmmatney]

I had a similar problem with my first LCD (using the original nForce chipset with on board video overridden by a GeForce4 Ti4200. I could not see anything until windows started. Then I switched from a DVI connector to the RGB connector and things started working normally. I then switched back to the DVI connector and again everything worked fine and has worked fine ever since. Strange.

 

[evojulz]

Hi, the fact that video playback is fine with your on-board graphics indicates it?s not a codec issue (also these clips probably used to work fine). I presume, in you efforts to fix the no video at post issue, you have tried different graphics drivers for your 9600Pro. If not then there are a few different versions at driverguide (free membership) I found the ones from ATI for the Radeon Family useless.

http://members.driverguide.com/index.ph...&qa5=4&qa6=127&dp=3&sm=b&jmd=and&fzz=b

Unless your video card is dying the only other this I would mention is to check the settings on your graphics card properties as you have recently been testing some trial and error preferences. Good luck.