Blank screen after video card upgrade on old and new card

this_justen

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Dec 28, 2011
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Hello all,

Having quite the issue this weekend. I decided to upgrade to a gt460 by the community's previous recommendation and I followed the step by step guide to ensure proper installation. After powering the computer back on, I get a totally blank display with the new card. I contact Evga and they ask me to uninstall the new card an reinstall the 7600gt. I do as requested and still get a blank screen. There are no error beeps with either of the cards from the mobo. I am told to try resetting the CMOS by removing the battery on the motherboard for half of an hour.

This is especially frustrating as I use the computer to maintain contact with my wife.

Mobo is a Gigabyte ga-p35c-ds3r and power supply is a cooler master extreme rp-550-pcar 550watt atx.

Thanks in advanced for any reply.
 
Well, it may be time to get down to basics.

Even if the machine was working before.

First.
Do you have a PC speaker. It can beep all kinds of codes at you to let you know what is wrong.

Second.
Have you tried to remove all your sticks of memory and just re-insert 1 stick. The reason for this is that if you memory was knocked loose when installing the new card, you would get a no post situation. Your board also takes 2 different types of memory, clearly only one can be used at a time.

Third.
Are you sure all plugs for power are connected to the board(24 pin power + 4 pin cpu power)?

See how far you get.

Post your results.

This is a link for a new build, but may be worth looking over it as well(clearly some may not apply to you).

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-perform-steps-posting-post-boot-video-problems
 

this_justen

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Thank you for your speedy reply.

First: Yes, I do have a computer speaker and it is making no audible noises.

Second: I tried the memory thing after inspecting the sticks. None of them were loose to start with, but I tried it anyways. Still same result.

Third: All plugs for power are indeed connected from what I can see. I pushed the 24 pin power to verify, as well as the 4 pin cpu power. CPU+Fan are working, rear fan is working, front fan is working

However, my USB mouse and keyboard no longer power on, and I wore my headphones for about 5 minutes and never heard the Windows start up sound.
 

this_justen

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Also, side note: Also reinstalled battery before trying the above steps after 1 hour of removal.

Still same results. Also, still trying to run off of the 7600GT card now instead of the new GT460
 
When you did that battery removal, was the systems power supply off or unplugged?

1. You should unplug the system, hit the power button to clear any power from the caps.
2. remove the battery(may not need to do this, i never have, but play it safe)
3. Place a jumper over the clear cmos location on the board for a few min
Here is a pic of your jumper location.
http://www.madshrimps.be/articles/article/671/Overclocking-with-Gigabyte-P35C-DS3R-and-Intel-Q6600/4#axzz1inSszWYU
4. remove that jumper
5. reinstall the battery
5a. reinstall your video card if needed.
6. plug the system back in.


Cross your fingers.
 
The only thing i see left, may be the power supply. It may well have not been able to work properly with the new card and be not functioning properly. I had an older Antec power supply(EA430) do just this, but without a system upgrade. Once replaced it, everything started to work again.

There is a chance, but its a slight one that the system has suffered damage fro ESD(Electrostatic Discharge). Lets hope now, cause that can cause many an issue(and break almost anything).
 
You can test with a multimeter on a 4 pin molex(old hard drive plugs). Please note, some variation can happen. as long as it is within 5%(and is not playing all over the place) it should be ok.

Black to red = 5
black to yellow = 12
black to orange(not easy to find unless you get it from the 24 pin connector attached to the board) = 3.3

This said, My Antec unit was all in spec. It was just not giving the power ok signal to the board and thereby not working. I placed it on an older board and loaded it with a few video cards and lots of fans, it was fine and in spec, but without the power ok signal, the newer board would not boot.

This is the paper clip way to test a power supply, but with no load, it is not much of a test.

http://www.overclock.net/t/96712/how-to-jump-start-a-power-supply-psu-test-a-power-supply-and-components

Here is what all the pins in the main 24 pin should be.

http://www.smpspowersupply.com/connectors-pinouts.html