No Video but system boots

[thegisguy]

I'm trying to diagnose this over the phone for my brother and out of ideas.

His computer is a hand me down from me. It's been working fine for the most part, up till yesterday. Yesterday morning he turned the system on, heard the windows xp start up chime. When he went to use it the monitor was blank. He double checked the connects, which were fine. It has on board video so I had him switch to that, and it was the same. I overnight'ed him an old APG card I know works (at least before shipping). He put that in and same deal, Windows starts but no video. It occurred to me that it might be that one of his kids set the contrast, or brightness to a crazy setting. He's ruled that out. The card I sent him had a vga and dvi output. So I had him connect the computer to his LCD tv with the DVI. The DVI also just shows a black screen.

Pulling the video and attempting to boot without video card results in a video error beep code.

The thing I don't understand is neither the monitor or TV says no input detected, it seems to be getting a signal but the signal is black or empty.

Any Ideas?

Quick Specs on System:
P4 2.0Ghz
Intel MB
1GB DDR333 Ram
ATI Radion 9200 AGP Videocard
325 Watt Antec PS
WD 5200RPM 80GB HD
Windows XP Pro SP2

 

[mpilchfamily]

Sounds like a driver issue. Have him boot it in safe mode. If you still get the same result then there is a hardware issue likely from the motherboard.

 

[thegisguy]

Can't boot into safe mode. Nothing every appears on the screen. No Post screen, but as I said the boot completes or appears to since he hears the windows start up music.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

Try different video cables?

That is one strange problem.

 

[thegisguy]

The First bad video card was connected to his monitor via VGA. The second card was first connected via VGA as well. When he connected the PC to his LCD TV it was via DVI (second card). So that rules out the cable too.

I would think it was maybe that AGP slot was bad or dying.

The one thing that occurred to me to have him try is resetting the cmos. Maybe the no board video failed because it was disabled in the bios. I'll keep you posted.

I've been in the IT world for year and never come across anything like this...

 

[thegisguy]

Well I had my brother clear the CMOS. Now the system fails to post. He is getting a beep code now. Looks like maybe the MB is just failing. I have a replacement I might just send him.

 

[Ausm]

Sounds like the mobo is cashed to me and that power supply he is using is a little on the small side imo.