No video

[Megadeth]

Lets start from the begining. I was asked to look at a PC as a favor so I did.

At first the PC would not power on at all.... I unplugged everything and I reseated the connection from the Power Supply to the MB. This did nothing. So I grabbed a spare Power supply the next day and hooked it up and the PC turned on....

I don't know why but I decided to try the old PS again and the PC turned on... I thought I made some progress except there was no video!

I tried both PS's and there still was no video, I tried 2 different monitors /cables, still no video... I did notice however when the monitor was not connected to the PC the message appeared on the monitor "No Signal, check cable" or something like that.... The message would go away when I connected it to the PC... The light on the monitor would turn green for a second after connecting the montior to the PC then turn orange.

The video connection on the PC is integrated, so I looked around and found an old PCI MX200 card. I installed that and I still had the same effect, nothing coming up on the PC.

I then tried some simple things, I reset the CMOS and reseated the memory (tried different slot also).

I was given the option to order parts for this PC if needed. I'm wondering if this PC took a power hit and is pretty much useless or if there is something simple I can still try.

Any suggestions?

 

[Ike0069]

When you installed the PCI VC, did you change the BIOS so that it no longer is trying to use On-board video? Also, did you install drivers for that card? If it's that old, Windows XP (guessing this is the OS?) migh not recognize it without user installed drivers.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Yes, after installing the pci, reset the cmos again

 

[Megadeth]

I can't see the BIOS because I have nothing going to the screen. The best I could do was use teh reset jumper to clear CMOS on teh mother board and take out the CMOS battery. I looked and didnt see any Jumper on the MB for disabling the onboard Video.

 

[Megadeth]

Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer
Yes, after installing the pci, reset the cmos again

I did

 

[Ike0069]

Originally posted by: Megadeth
I can't see the BIOS because I have nothing going to the screen. The best I could do was use teh reset jumper to clear CMOS on teh mother board and take out the CMOS battery. I looked and didnt see any Jumper on the MB for disabling the onboard Video.

Doh! I'm not even thinking this morning.

Anyways, due to the age of that card, I'm not sure that is a good test. Do have any other VC that you can try?

 

[Megadeth]

The card came out of working spare computer. The newer computer is not really new but not old either... The system is an athlon 2400+.... Not sure about the MB.... I'll have to check after work.

 

[Ike0069]

What I'm trying to say is that since the card is an old PCI based card, the MB might not understand that there is a sepaerate VC installed. It might just see it as another PCI card and is still trying to use onboard video to get a signal.

Does the MB have an AGP slot? If so, youmight need an AGP card to get the MB to boot up using that instead of on-board.

Now I'm basically just stabbing in the dark here, but just trying to give you something to try. No idea how likely this scenario actually is.

 

[Megadeth]

I might have an old mx440 agp card unless I gave that to a friend.... If I do I will try that when I'm out of work.

 

[Ike0069]

Let us know if that works. I'm real curious about this one.