Can't Get A Signal On Monitor

[MDRuiz]

Hey guys,

I'm having some serious boot issues with my machine. I have no idea what the root of the problem is but I'm inclined to think it's some silly little problem causing major issues.

I was using XP on my C:\ drive and just installed a copy of Vista on one of my other 2 drives and all went pretty smoothly. I was able use Vista's boot manager to select either Vista or my old XP on the other drive. I'm in Vista. All is well.

I start updating Vista, still, no problems.

Then I shut down the computer to take a break and put my case cover back on.

While I'm in there I figure I'd reconnect an led pin that seemed to have fallen out a couple of weeks ago (for a stupid little light on the front of my case).

I start up and the monitor is getting no signal. Lights are going on on the motherboard and my cd-drives are being powered, but I don't seem to be booting into anything. My keyboard's num-lock light can be turned on or off, but it freezes off after hitting it a couple of times.

I've tried restarting and resetting by nothing is coming through to my monitor. I've even disconnected and reconnected all 3 of my internal drives - nothing. Even with all drives removed from my board I can't get the monitor to display anything. I can't even get into BIOS essentially.

What could I have messed up so badly by plugging in that led-pin? What can cause a problem like this? I've also tried booting with all of my front panel connectors in various levels of connected/unplugged but still no success.


Here are my specs btw:
BIOS American Megatrends Inc. 1.2 (7/13/2007)
MSI P6N Diamond nForce 680i SLI Chipset LGA775 FSB1333 DDR2 Mainboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz 1066FSB 8MB L2 Cache 64-bit
Ultra X3 1,000 Watts PSU
Mushkin Xtreme 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory
eVGA NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 16X PCI Express
320GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD
WD 150gb WD1500AHFD SATA150 10,000rpm 16mb Raptor X
Vista 32bit Ultimate
Windows XP SP2

Any insight to this would be a lifesaver! Thanks

 

[micker377]

Which "stupid little LED" was it? What is it an indicator for? All these lights have to be powered somehow. It is possible that you have damaged the motherboard! Try: power down - unplug the plug from the wall - remove the little BIOS backup battery - push and hold the on-off button for 10 to 30 seconds. This discharges all the caps and puts all the settings back to default. Put everything back together (might as well change the battery while you are there - it's cheap, and they only last for a couple of years), power up and pray! You could also have "loaded down" the power supply, and damaged it - you may have to try a another one.

 

[BadBigBen]

I got to agree with Micker377 here, about powering down removing the battery and the PSU reset (pushing the power switch for the time given)...

if you still have the probs afterwards, check with another PSU (as mentioned) and check the MSI FORUM for similar problems with that mainboard...



Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[ekimrm]

Depending on what the light was for or if it already had power to it you could have shorted out your motherboard. Seen this happen before.

 

[edfair]

At a minimum you need the power-up switch plugged in. Nothing else is required. And if you know which is for power-up and leave the case open you can use a screwdriver blade to short them out.

There shouldn't have been anything you could do with the connectors that caused the problem. If the pins were outputs they were protected by resistors. If inputs, they were contact points to force protected circuits to ground.

I would be more concerned that you wiggled stuff around and something like the AGP card tail worked out of the slot. Or a loose fan connector fell out.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[MDRuiz]

Well, I'm happy to report that I've fixed the problem. Unfortunately, in retrospect, I still don't quite understand what the problem was.

Here's what I know and I what I did.

-Added Vista Ultimate to my raptor drive so I could dual boot with XP on my original HD.

-Plugged in a logo LED light pin that had fallen out of my mobo.

-Vista loses stability, freezes, locks up, and won't give me a signal on the monitor when I boot up - it seems to restart okay for a while.

-Front pin connectors work randomly - eg. they're all plugged in properly, but on one boot I get LED light and reset light, on another I get audio monitoring, then nothing but HD monitor.

-I lose the ability to get a signal even with USB or whatever connections I have going on in the back. Even with just the power cord and the monitor I can't get a signal. Every possible combination you can think of I can't get it to give me anything on the monitor.

THEN

Even though nothing else is out of place inside the case - all connections are solid - I try booting with one stick of RAM for the hell of it. Bingo. I get a signal, but the computer freezes trying to get into bios.

Fine, I try booting with my other stick of ram thinking that maybe one stick had gone bad. I get into bios! I load the optimized defaults and I'm back in Vista (stable! with rebooting and cold booting) for a couple of days. Missing my two gigs (hey, it's Vista), I decide to put the other one back in to make certain that this was the issue. Guess what? I've been running on both sticks again, totally stable for the last half a week.

My popular theory is that somehow the Vista installation messed up something with my bios settings? But then even a CMOS clear wasn't getting me a signal, I had to physically remove some of the RAM to get a signal. Well, I'm just happy to be back online. All I can say is if you're having serious issues getting a signal to your monitor that sound like mine, go for the RAM.