Boots up, no output on screen... seperate video cards.

[beezmnet]

DFI LanParty NFII Ultra Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 2100+ w/400 fsb Processor
OCZ 1024MB Dual Channel PC3200 DDR Ram
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro GFX Card


Well... I just got back home from college, I go to school up in south dakota and live in mississippi, well my precious computer rode in my trunk the whole way down, being bounced and jarred around.
I get home and I try hooking up my computer, I dont get any output on the screen... none at all, i've had wierd problems with my graphic card before, but i would just have to do wierd things, like plug it into the dvi port or have a 2nd monitor plugged in for it to work correctly, because it would throw out some wierd resolution that my lcd can't display, this time it's not getting a signal at all though... so i replace the card with a crappy nvidia pci one i had in another computer that i know works fine, still nothing, i've tried other monitors as well.

I get no output whatsoever on the screen, if i listen close i get a beep noise every few seconds it sounds, not sure if this is normal or not, can't really remember, lol, i don't think it is.

Does anyone have ANY idea what could have happened ? I checked to make sure everything was still plugged in/seated properly, I am currently in the process of tearing evertyhing out of it and hooking it all back up to make sure everything is plugged in correctly (it's currently sprawled about my floor).

I was told also that I needed to switch the bios settings from an AGP card to PCI when I was trying to test it with the other card, how would I even do this without any type of output on the screen ?! lol...

ANY help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Stewart

 

[beezmnet]

After getting it all back together now actually... I notice that the HDD light on my case stays on and when I go to turn off the computer I just have to press the button for a brief moment to turn it off rather than having to hold the button down, so I don't think it's even getting to the windows boot sequence at all.

 

[bmouring]

Yes, insta-turnoff usually indicates that it's not making it into the boot sequesnce.

Also, BIOS should only been once if everything's fine, so constant beening means something's awry. Considering it's been in a trunk for a long trip, I would first check all of the connections and reseat all of the cards and memory as it's quite possible one or more have jostled loose.

If that does fix it, the next logical step it to strip it down to the bare essentials (power supply, mobo, cpu, heatsink/fan, memory, and one of the video cards) and see if it'll boot and put something onscreen. If not, it's time to start calling up buddies and borrowing parts from their machines to try to figure out what's dead. Hope this helps.

Edit: Typos and added useful stuff.

 

[nukemaster]

and since computers live to piss us off....give er a good bios reset(with the jumper)....and as said just reseat all.....

if not take out everything(leave just one stick of ram,cpu no hdd or odd) but the video card and if that works start adding.

As for your video....i have my x850 do that.... had to tell windows what was primary...then one bsod later it was all good

hope this helps....

 

[beezmnet]

Well I'm still baffled as to what was causing it... I stripped it all down to one stick of ram, cpu, and graphic card. I started getting a display again, so I started adding parts back... it never went out again. wtf? lol... ah well, I'm going to always wonder what was up with it, every piece that was in it when it was having problems is back in it now, and it works just as well as it did before. The part that bafffles me is i would think that it was just something was loose, well I already stripped it apart once and pieced it back together again, so I know everything was seated/plugged in correctly.

I'm happy though ! lol.
Thanks for the suggestions too guys.

- Stewart

 

[bmouring]

I've been a part of such a "miracle" many, many times . Essentially, it's likely that either one of the cards/memory sticks looked like it was in-place but it really wasn't or, like Nukemaster said, sometimes a bit can flip mysteriously when the moons of Jupiter align and the swallows return to Capistrano and... it just requires a BIOS reset.

 

[Stalkingsamurai]

A few weeks ago, I had a similar problem. I tried switching out motherboards, my video card, I even got a new psu, but none of these fixed it. Finally admitting defeat, I took my system in to the local computer repair shop. They fixed it by the next day, and when I picked it up, they said that the motherboard was shorting out on the case. It would boot and instantly shutdown, only to reboot. I can't say that this is the same problem you had, just a similar one. In any case, its worth investigating if nothing else works.

 

[cleeve]

9500 PRO?

Did you remember to plug the dedicated power cable into the card...?

 

[bmouring]

Yes, I've seen this happen a lot too. That's why anytime I participate in a build (either for myself or others) i lay the mobo down where it will go in the case, line up the mounting holes with the threaded holes in the case, and then mark the mobo tray near those holes with a sharpie so as to only install the mounts that are actually needed.

Also, to Stalkingsamurai and Cleeve, in his last post:

Well I'm still baffled as to what _was_ causing it... I started getting a display again, so I started adding parts back... it never went out again. wtf? lol... ah well, I'm going to always wonder what _was_ up with it, every piece that was in it when it was having problems is back in it now, and _it works_ just as well as it did before...

so whatever the problem was, he got it. Thank you for the fine suggestions though.