Greetings,

This is an interesting situation.  This is also the second time this has happened with the same model video card: the PNY Geforce 9800GT 1GB PCI-E.

This card twice now (two different cards) decided it was sick of displaying video output during post, and doesn't show the loading animation for Windows either.  It simply says no signal until the login screen.  

This happened to the first card I owned, and I had it replaced via warranty, and now this one is doing it.  They both went a couple years before doing this.  Once Windows loads up the card performs normally. It's just really bizarre.  I put another card in (ATI), went into BIOS, verified PCI-E graphics was set to default even though there isn't an integrated controller here.

Anyway, regardless of which of the two DVI outputs I choose, regardless of removing drivers, resetting the BIOS, nothing changes this problem. I know there's a random solution somewhere out there, but I can't find it.  I know that it's something to do with the card itself because when my first card did this, and I got the warranty replacement, it worked perfectly, showed the BIOS again and everything.  It's as if something corrupted the firmware or something.

I am forced to replace this video card with another...I need to be able to use the BIOS, and use boot discs etc. There is something in the firmware that I believe is hosed.

Anyone have any ideas or insight?

Thanks.

weak power supply, damaging the video card over time? What OS? What are the rest of the specs? Has anything changed with the system, new monitor,new cable, new firmware/drivers? Did a windows update overwrite the drivers you were using? Or did one cause an issue with the drivers you were using? Did you try setting the system bios to no for pnpos? Have you tried to locate a firmware and use nvflash to flash it? This last one is a last resort, as you could really mess up the video card, if not careful.

No, not a weak power supply. System runs great. I haven't heard of nvflash before. I think that might help. I really think it has to do with the firmware getting corrupted somehow.

Well, since FW is at system level and is a closed system, that needs special tools/hardware to write to it, it would be very hard for it to become corrupted. NVFlash is a tool to used to write FW to nvidia chipsets. It could be a video card, or a tablet/cell phone using the Tegra family of chips. It is command line interface only, and since you have to type the whole string in one go, and you can mistype a flag or command, and it will still attempt to write, you can really mess up a chip that was ok. Look at the overclocking and modder forums for flashing nvidia video cards for the tool, and collection of firmwares, 3dguru is a place to start as well as overclock.net,overclockers club.  

here is a tutorial on how to flash the video card, and tools needed.

http://www.overclock.net/t/149879/howto-nvidia-bios-flashing

>> I really think it has to do with the firmware getting corrupted somehow.

I don not think so, other wise it would be seen all the time...


Q: ever tried it with two monitors? a different monitor?

things to try:

while posting hit reset, keep doing so until you see a BIOS message...
try another, totally different, monitor...
hit the OFF switch on your PSU, or unplug the power cable, then hold the ON switch on the PC for more than a minute, letting the capacitors drain, then replug power cable (or turn the PSU on again) then hit the power on on the PC... does it then show a BIOS screen?


 

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

In addition to what BadBigBen said, could it be anything to do with the default video card set in the BIOS.  You know - a setting like "integrated"/"pci-e"