No Display on Boot 1

[igarrod]

When the system boots there is absolutely no display on the monitor even during POST. There appears to be no signal as orange light on monitor remains on. However the system boots normally into Windows 98 but without displaying anything on the screen. I have to shut down 'blind' from the keyboard. The Gainward card appears to be recognised OK (no abnormal beeps and the indicator lights connected to MSI M/board are all green). The fan on the card is spinning but nothing is displayed on the monitor.The card has been returned to the supplier. It was tested successfully on a different mobo and returned to me.
There is no problem with the Belinea monitor as it works fine if I replace my previous graphics card (Matrox G400 Max). Before I installed the Gainward AGP card I did remove all the Matrox drivers but the problem remained.
Could it be a monitor or VGA cable compatibility problem?
This is getting very frustrating. ANY IDEAS?
MANY THANKS
M/B: MSI KT3 Ultra 2
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2100+
RAM: 256 MB PC2700
Graphics: Gainward GF4 Ti 4200 Ultra 650 XP Golden Sample 128MB DDR.
Monitor: 17 in Belinea 10 70 65
PSU: Enermax 350W
This is getting very frustrating. ANY IDEAS?
MANY THANKS

 

[Jamesobrien]

I've had this problem a couple of times, for me all it was, was a loose IDE cable, try checking the drive cables and power cables are all secure.
If not, try another video card in the PC.

 

[gargouille]

Flushing the BIOS with the jumper...while powered down and unplugged may bring it around. It'll flush CMOS RAM and restore defaults...so there shouldn't be any problems with the BIOS...which I suspect in this case.
If you had Plug and Play enabled with the old card the BIOS may be loading the older drivers.

 

[gargouille]

Oops, my last statement is ba__ackwards...
Plug and Play set to YES...the BIOS will only initialize the PnP cards used for booting (VGA, IDE, SCSI)...and the rest by the OS. Set to NO...the BIOS will initialize all the PnP cards.
Sorry for the confusion...
The rest of the post stands.

 

[tastewart]

I've had a similar problem with the same video card....... turned out to be my monitor (KDS Xtreme flat 17'). Although the monitor works fine with other cards, it often (but not always) wouldn't display on start up with the geforce 4 2400. I'd reboot till it eventually displayed. A different monitor worked fine. It seems that the geforce 4 was looking to see what was attached to it while the KDS monitor was taking a shower and brushing it's teeth. To bad too because I like the way the KDS looks....can't tolerate the startup procedure though.

 

[Kicket]

hmmmm sounds like a fried CPU
check ur fans and heatsinks, and test CPU on another machine
ff

 

[apickup]

I had exactly the dame problem with several machines. One of them had a replacement motherboard, still didn't work, so went in the bin after every other bit of hardware was replaced.

Then I tried replacing the PSU. Problem solved. The old one was presumably running at a reduced voltage, and couldn't power the graphics card.

Have now ordered several high-quality PSUs - not worth saving money here!

 

[mainegeek]

Try reseating the card. Also make sure all your cables are connected inside and out.

 

[XxIllEmpirexX]

I had that problem too, now the only thing that I could have figured out was that the Video Card does not get recognized from the boot until windows good ol' p[lug n play doesnt kick in. Put you monitor on the original cideo out slot, then once the system is loaded update the driver of the video card either through the software cd (if video card came with one) or get one offline, update the driver, then click your monitor over to the video card and restart your pc.

 

[igarrod]

Have now solved it. It was the monitor cable. Existing Belinea cable had all pins in place. Bought replacement cable with pin 9 missing (as seems to be the standard for all VGA cables). Gainward card now displays in all it's glory. Many thanks for all the suggested solutions.