No signal from video card

[sailor420]

Hi all,

A friend of mine is having some issues with his desktop that we built a couple of years ago. I'll go through what the symptoms have been, and then go through what we've tried.

It started a few months ago when seemingly out of the blue, the monitor stopped receiving input from the machine. The machine was posting, and it seemed to be booting up behind the scenes, but the monitor just gave the "no signal" message and shut off.

Here's what we've tried:

* Resetting CMOS. No dice.
* Reseating all components (vid card, RAM, cables, power, etc). Nothing.
* Switching out the RAM. Nope.
* New video card. Same symptoms.
* Plug monitor into onboard video. Now we get video, and it boots.
* Boot up with monitor plugged into PCI-E video card. Again, nothing. This time, with machine still on (i.e. without rebooting), we unplug from the PCI-E card and plug into the onboard. Now we have a signal.
* Repeat the above with the old video card. Same results
* Make sure the BIOS is set to use the PCI-E card rather than the onboard. It is. More interestingly, it's set to only enable the onboard when it doesn't detect a PCI-E card.



So it seems at this point that it's not a problem with the video card, but rather that the motherboard is for some reason not detecting the video card at all. How could this be happening? Is it possible for the slot to somehow stop working? I'd think that if something like this happened, that there would be other problems with the mobo as well (i.e. not just the PCI-E slot would die, the machine would stop booting, etc).

Any suggestions on what this might be, anything else I could try, or how I meet fix it?

Thanks for the help, folks.

 

[sandorski]

could be the slot

 

[sailor420]

Could just the slot die, leaving everything working? I'd think that if something happened to the mobo to kill the slot, that there would be a lot more issues than just this.

 

[Elias824]

ive had ram and pci slots go out on me before, rest of the board can still work fine. Unless both the cards you were trying were bad? maybe you fried the other when when putting it in? Or maybe the computer has become sentient and just decided it dosent like you. what System, video cards and such were you using?

 

[sailor420]

Here are the specs:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-M55plus-S3G
Onboard video: NVIDIA GeForce 6100
PSU: Antec earthwatts EA380 380W
RAM: Kingston ValueRAM 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3800+
New video card: MSI N9600GT-MD1G GeForce 9600 GT 1GB
Old video card: EVGA 256-P2-N554-AX GeForce 7600GT 256MB

Let me know if there's any other information that anyone needs.



Additionally, I just talked to my friend, and he says that now, the PCI-E card SOMETIMES is working when you boot it up. Sometimes signal goes to the card, sometimes not. Any thoughts?

 

[sandorski]

new power supply might be needed.

 

[sailor420]

This is definitely a possibility, except that it was just replaced 6 months ago. It's certainly possible for it to have died in that time, but would be odd. Unfortunately, we don't have another one that we can swap out to test with.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: sailor420
This is definitely a possibility, except that it was just replaced 6 months ago. It's certainly possible for it to have died in that time, but would be odd. Unfortunately, we don't have another one that we can swap out to test with.

Can you adjust the PCI-e Voltage in BIOS? Try Bumping it up.

 

[sailor420]

I believe we can, but only by changing the voltage of the Northbridge chipset as well. Worth a try, anyways.

 

[sailor420]

Some more information that we just found out:

• When booting to the onboard video, but with the video card in the machine, the PCI-E video card does show up in the Device Manager

• The machine once, seemingly randomly, booted correctly, with signal coming through the PCI-E card. However, after a minute or two, the screen went a solid brown color, and we had to reboot. Hasn't done this again.

 

[sandorski]

Hmm, probably is some Motherboard problem then. I'd unplug the Vidcard and just use Onboard until you can get the Mobo replaced. A Capacitor or some other component is likely failing or some other such thing specific to the PCI-e slot is amiss.

 

[alkalinetaupehat]

Probably-obligatory "Did you flash the BIOS to the latest version?" post.

 

[sailor420]

Errr, no, didn't flash the BIOS. Probably should have... Feel pretty silly actually.

But, in desperation last night, we started fiddling some more with the settings in the BIOS, and set the motherboard to boot to the (non-existent) PCI (not PCI-E) card first. For some reason, this appears to have made it start working. We've rebooted a few times, and are now consistently getting signal from the PCI-E card.

No idea what voodoo is going on with this machine, but we're going to cross our fingers and hope it continues working.

Thanks for the help all. If it blows up again in the future, I'll be sure to post again.

Thanks!

 

[sandorski]

sweet

 

[Copperpipe]

Interesting symptoms & solution.
I had the exact same problem with a Biostar mobo w/integrated 6100 graphics onboard, old video card = 7600GT, & new video card = 9600GT.

Actually, the 9600GT card was working for over a year but failed recently, & I have the 7600GT back in there temporarily. But now when I try to boot up with the replacement 9600GT (verified/tested OK by the factory), I get a "No Signal" from the monitor. I've tried clearing the CMOS & reseating the RAM several times, but I still can't get to a post screen with the replacement 9600GT. It seems these integrated boards are somewhat more sensitive when installing a replacement video card for some unknown reason. I reseated the memory & cleared the CMOS several times as well as tinkered around with the BIOS settings. But I never tried setting the bootup to PCI.

I'll give that a try.

 

[AzN]

You have to disable the onboard video.

 

[Copperpipe]

I wish I could. There is no option in the BIOS setup for disabling the onboard graphics - at least for my motherboard that is the case.

 

[sailor420]

Unfortunately, there's not any option to do this--only to have it disable it if it detects the PCI-E card, but the lack of PCI-E detection was the problem in the first place, so that didn't do us much.

 

[AzN]

tell me what your motherboard is.

 

[Copperpipe]

Sailor420,

Resetting my BIOS to look for the PCI card first does not do anything. It's also interesting that clearing the CMOS does the same thing on my TForce 6100-939 mobo, i.e., it sets the PCI (not PCI-E) to first in the video post sequence.

Actually in my case, I determined that the RMA replacement video card I received is bad. I assumed all this time it was good, but my subsequent testing with a brand new ($79) 9800GT card (boots up/runs fine) revealed otherwise. I thought that maybe my 7600GT was able to run (vs. the 9600GT could not) due to my power supply going south, but the 9800GT running OK tells me otherwise. RMA time again.

I don't know what's causing your problem, but I suspect it's probably your motherboard.

 

[deimos3428]

The onboard video uses VGA, correct? It looks like both video cards are using DVI, so I assume that's how you're connecting them to the monitor. So it could be an issue specific to DVI, either the cable itself or the ports at each end.

Quick things to do to isolate the problem:

1. Check for bent pins on both ends of the cable, or damage along it's length. If you have a spare, swap out the DVI cable.
2. Check the ports on both the card and monitor to confirm everything looks fine. If you have another known-good monitor with a DVI port, swap it out.
3. Try using the VGA port on your 9600GT instead. It should work, as the VGA cable and VGA monitor port are confirmed to work with the onboard video. If not, start investigating whether the 9600GT/motherboard/PSU is bad.