[frankbelgium]

Hey all,

OS: XP
video card: Geforce FX

I have serious problem, my monitor receives no signal anymore and therefore I can't acces my computer.
The Video cable from pc to monitor is OK
the monitor receives electricity.

First action, tried another monitor (other video cable and other screen) => still no signal

second action: tried an other video card. (this was a really old one => unplugged my geforce FX and plugged the other card into the PCI slot =>stil no signal!

Does this mean that the problem will be made by the motherboard? :-(
what can I do? to check what is really the problem? What if my motherboard is the cause? Will I still be able to acces all my ancient files and outlook mails?

please help me out!
greetings!
Frank

[kiwiguy]

Firstly, look beyond the monitor.

Is the PC actually booting (fans running is no guarantee of a successful boot)
When you think it should have booted, try the CAPS Lock key, every time you press it the CAPS Lock light on the keyboard should toggle off and on. If this does not happen, the problem is that the PC has not booted, so naturally the monitor cannot display anything.

If it was just the hard drive, you would still see the BIOS screen, so its probably deeper than that, based solely on your brief description. Some obscure HDD problems can prevent a boot however, and that type of failure could mean a thousand $ or more to recover the data (failed on-drive electronics).

It could be the PSU, CPU, Motherboard or ....

If you have access to another PC, I recommend removing the HDD from the failed PC and fitting it as a slave (make sure the jumper is set OK) and recover all your important files.
In this situation you will need to "take ownership" of the files and folders on the old drive to get access from the host PC, that is done as below.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308421

[brite750]

second action: tried an other video card. (this was a really old one => unplugged my geforce FX and plugged the other card into the PCI slot =>stil no signal!
Not sure I would have expected this to work anyway, see if you can get another agp card to try. Also is your pc even posting? one short beep.

[brite750]

no video is usually bad monitor, bad video card, or bad power supply, could also be ram, a bad hdd or cpu or mobo usually still gets you a bios screen.

[kiwiguy]

Originally Posted by brite750

no video is usually bad monitor, bad video card, or bad power supply, could also be ram, a bad hdd or cpu or mobo usually still gets you a bios screen.

Not so. The BIOS will only execute if the CPU is running, which relies on most of the motherboard as well.

The BIOS is just code held in non volatile memory, it's not a CPU in it's own right.

It therefore depends on the basic operation of the PC including some RAM (but not the HDD) in order to execute that code.

[Rumpo-Stiltskin]

Quite so.

Sounds more like a motherboard or power issue since the PCI card didn't work either.

Let us know what happened before this present state (was it sudden?) and exactly what happens when you power on the system now.

There shouldn't be any problem as regards accessing your files (from a different machine - or this one when it's fixed).


(Probably no harm in trying a BIOS reset and then having another go with the PCI video card.)

[brite750]

Originally Posted by kiwiguy

Not so. The BIOS will only execute if the CPU is running, which relies on most of the motherboard as well.

The BIOS is just code held in non volatile memory, it's not a CPU in it's own right.

It therefore depends on the basic operation of the PC including some RAM (but not the HDD) in order to execute that code.

You may be right could have sworn that w/o a cpu you still get a bios screen, havent tried that for a long while, memory might be failing me