No display on boot up except...

[DiGG]

I'm totally new here, and french to boot, so I'll try to explain as best as possible. I bought a system from my brother laterly, I just have to reassembled every pieces in another casing. Booted right up, all was ok until...

My computer froze ONCE at random, monitor went to black (no signal), heard the computer rebooting (beep) and nothing was showing up on the monitor until it arrived at my Vista login-password and then the signal kicked back in! So all was ok until I had to shutdown/reset hours later... and on boot up I wouldn't have the signal until I reached Vista login again.

Now I was wondering... I unplugged pretty much everything, and replugged, still had the same problem. I tried one thing that worked though: I switched the 2 DVI outputs, and what do you know I could see the entire boot sequence as usual (not exactly, as the very first seconds of the boot I see a graphic of the bios-chipset, that I never saw on normal monitor boot). But of course once it reached Vista login, the display disapeared and I had to reswitch the DVI outputs so I could resume normal operations.

Everything has normal until that ONE reboot out of nowhere. I've searched and read many threds about "no signal" but none was saying that the secondary output was working. What am I suppose to do now?

System is:
e6600 Intel 2.4Ghz
2Gb ram
nVidia 8800GTS 256ram
MSI 975x Platinum mobo

 

[DiGG]

Someone hinted me to disconnect the secondary DVI output, so I did and *voila* I could see the boot on my primary display! Except... I need the secondary, and I was able to boot before with both.

Sigh.

 

[geofelt]

In the normal course of events, you should see the bios info and the windows boot progress indicator on the display attached to the primary dvi port. I think it is the lowest port, closest to the motherboard. After the login screen, the other display should light up. How this works may vary by the type of vga card. I recall seeing the exact same images on both monitors on a different system. How this works may be specified by options in the Bios. Look there to set which display/card is to be the boot primary. This specification could have been reset when the system rebooted itself earlier. It was probably resetting the bios to the default. Also, check that your cables do not have any bent pins, and that they are connected properly.

---good luck---

 

[DiGG]

Ok, well thanks for replying. First, the primary DVI connector is the one *not* closest to the motherboard. Both displays used to show the entire boot sequence until reaching the Vista-login screen, the secondary would lose the signal... until logged in Vista. Even if I would reverse the 2 outputs, I wouldn't see the login/password screen unless I see it on the tv (default secondary output).

As for the BIOS, I'm not finding ANYTHING related to:

Look there to set which display/card is to be the boot primary

I could even took pictures of my bios if you'd like... No bent pins on the cables, I even switched another dvi-vga connector and it's the same result.

So... nothing is changed hehe.