Video problem with two older computers.

[pous]

Hi there,

I was recently preparing to purchase a computer here, and got some great advice from Dior as to which parts to use. When I mentioned that I was looking to buy a computer to a friend, he gave me two of his older ones.

I figured I'd try getting those to work before going out and spending a whole bunch on a brand new one.

When I got them home, plugged in a hard drive/cd drive to each one, and then a monitor... when i powered them up there was no display on the screen... Both have AGP 128MB video cards, not sure the models, and I'm at work now so I can't check...

I was just wondering if you guys think it is a problem where the video cards are just shot or if it could be something else... all the fans and lights and such turn on, the cd drives work, and I can feel a slight bit of motion if I touch the side of the hard drive (you know that feeling you get when it's on and you touch it?)

Anyways, thanks in advance for any help or advice you can give, I'm kind of stumped here.

 

[jaguarskx]

Try re-seating the AGP cards, or swap them between the two PCs. Double check your VGA cable connections too.

 

[pous]

Try re-seating the AGP cards, or swap them between the two PCs. Double check your VGA cable connections too.

Thanks for the advice. I'll be sure to try that and post with what happens.

 

[caamsa]

Explain what you did again? You plugged in a hard drive with an operating system or you put in a new hard drive and loaded in the operating system.? If you did the first then I can see where you might run into some problems. You will probably need to check the hardware device manager and see if you have any conflicts. If you do then you might be able to get by loading updated video drivers or you might have to load the operating system all over again. But I imagine the cards should have worked but you probably would not get a very high resolution.

 

[pous]

Explain what you did again? You plugged in a hard drive with an operating system or you put in a new hard drive and loaded in the operating system.? If you did the first then I can see where you might run into some problems. You will probably need to check the hardware device manager and see if you have any conflicts. If you do then you might be able to get by loading updated video drivers or you might have to load the operating system all over again. But I imagine the cards should have worked but you probably would not get a very high resolution.

Thanks for replying (=

I got two old computers with everything in them except a hard drive and optical drive.

The hard drive I had... may or may not have windows on it, I got that from the same friend, and didn't check it first.

Even if it had an OS on it, I couldn't see anything on the screen from the moment I turned the computer on... none of the post data or anything like that that normally shows up right away...

Maybe I could plug in the hard drive to another computer and see what's on it, and/or format/install XP on it.

I'm not sure what components are in the two PC's, so as far as getting drivers, that could be difficult.

Thanks for the reply again, I'll be looking into it more tonight after work.

 

[ffchocobo]

There's no need to worry about the hard drive or optical drive if the machine won't post as without these components the machine should still do the post but give you an error and not a black screen.

If possible it would help greatly if you could tell us what components were in the machines, googling serial numbers should usually do the trick.

Have you checked there is nothing causing a short between the motherboard and the case? Prehaps assemble everything outside of the case so you can easily google the components and/or eliminate the possibility of a short from the case.

And not to sound patronising or anything but have you ensured it has a cpu under the heatsink? (it could happen?)

 

[pous]

There's no need to worry about the hard drive or optical drive if the machine won't post as without these components the machine should still do the post but give you an error and not a black screen.

If possible it would help greatly if you could tell us what components were in the machines, googling serial numbers should usually do the trick.

Have you checked there is nothing causing a short between the motherboard and the case? Prehaps assemble everything outside of the case so you can easily google the components and/or eliminate the possibility of a short from the case.

And not to sound patronising or anything but have you ensured it has a cpu under the heatsink? (it could happen?)

Thanks for your reply (=

Firstly, I will certainly try to get some serial numbers and model types and whatnot.

Second as for a short, I'm not sure how that would happen, and still have everything fully powered (lights, fans, action type of thing). I suppose I could check for that... but I'm pretty new to this, I haven't done anything like it for several years (so new in that I haven't done it in so long).

As for the idea of no CPU being in the system, there is most certainly one in each. One computer is actually an older one that I had sold to said friend about a year ago, and the other is a bare-bones model (motherboard+cpu) that he ordered and put ram/gpu into, but then didn't feel like finishing.

Thanks again for the replies. As stated earlier I'd be glad to see what information I can get after work tonight.

I think either way I'll be needing a second hard drive... can't run two computers with just one. After that it'll just be a matter of seeing what parts work and what parts don't.

 

[elbert]

Hi there,

I was recently preparing to purchase a computer here, and got some great advice from Dior as to which parts to use. When I mentioned that I was looking to buy a computer to a friend, he gave me two of his older ones.

I figured I'd try getting those to work before going out and spending a whole bunch on a brand new one.

When I got them home, plugged in a hard drive/cd drive to each one, and then a monitor... when i powered them up there was no display on the screen... Both have AGP 128MB video cards, not sure the models, and I'm at work now so I can't check...

I was just wondering if you guys think it is a problem where the video cards are just shot or if it could be something else... all the fans and lights and such turn on, the cd drives work, and I can feel a slight bit of motion if I touch the side of the hard drive (you know that feeling you get when it's on and you touch it?)

Anyways, thanks in advance for any help or advice you can give, I'm kind of stumped here.

What are the monitors your using? Monitors in XP may not run because the resolution is set higher than they can handle. Try pushing F8 until you get a menu at startup. The menu will have a startup in, i think, agp mode. If this works then try upping your resolution until the monitors black screen. Wait until XP resets itself to the lower resolution then your good to go.

 

[pous]

Thank you elbert.

I will try this F8 idea and see if anything works out that way. I'm not sure if that's the problem, but it's deffinitely worth trying.