Big Problem With PC - Cannot see no graphics on VDU

[dead_indian_walking]

OK, Big problem. This is what happened.

My friend HAs A PC with a AMD Atholon 2600 processor. On Friday there was no Graphics on screen on boot up. We tried everything but see nothing. Every else works, the DVD-RW, CD-RW, Hear the Hard drive and fans work. But no graphics.

My mate said to change the motherboard which we did to an MSI NForce2 motherboard. But to no avail, still same thing, no MS-DOs or Bios or any graphics ( we tried multiple monitors and cables), then we bought a new processor the AMD 3200 XP one and new DDR 512MB ram. BUt still, no graphics, eveything was clearly booting up, the lED's were lighting up, the fans work and you can hear the hard-drive.

Then we bought a new 128MB ATI Radeon graphics card with a VGA port. We tried it on a VGA cable/montior, but same thing. No graphics. Then we tried spare hard-drives, but same problem.

BUt we have not tried one thing well sort of. We tried an older power supply unit, but same thing, no graphics but it was struggling, my mate thinks we should buy a new Power supply cos that may be the cause.

( by the way, the motherboard has no VGA port, its got a MALE port, thats why we bought a new card with a VGA female port cos the monitor has a male connection - when we were testing it before the new graphics card, we were using a GEforce 2 64MB card, but that should not make a difference cos motherboards automatilcally detect whether the AGP slot is being used or not - SO WHY CANT WE SEE ANYTHIN)
What do you think?

[redwudz]

I'm assuming you get the BIOS single beep when the computer boots? Usually if the memory fails completely or the VGA board fails, you get different kinds of beeps.

Anyway, not getting the BIOS screen is pretty serious. Even with the wrong VGA settings you should see that.

If you have been through all that above, maybe power supply?

The male port on the MB is probably the serial port, no bearing on your problem.

[Bjs]

Two things :

1:

Beware that not all 8x agp cards are 8x / 4x / 2x supporting
Mine wasnt , even though I was told it was .

3 years warrantee , and it lasted only 5 months and died .

2:

Go to windows explorer , locate the msn folder , and right click on all files found with the msnupdater , and un-achive them , then apply , ok .

Delete them now

Run regedit , and locate anything with msnupdater in its name , it hides in the run area of the registry in 2 places , delete all instances .

Then run msconfig from run command , go to starup tab and uncheck msnupdater that is there .

Restart pc .

This was most likely caused by the msn hacker who struck last year by dropping a boot code into the chat window .

Cause : Apic controller failure .

this controls power managment , and a lot of new motherboards ahve no way to turn this off .

when this is damaged , you will be able to restore the onboard sound chip , but video is comprimised .

If this is the case , you will not beable to install an agp graphics card into the motherboard , without frying them in a few minutes .

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My sujestion would be to nab hold of an 8mb matrox pci card in ebay for a couple of bucks , they perform better than the nvidia 32mb tnt , and is what I fit to these compromised systems .

The other thing would be too check the reset button and see if there has been any melting , I know this trick all too well ...

See how that gose ..