|
nononono, youre all wrong. Someone already pointed out just now, that the monitor should be able to display a screen even from bios, which has nothing to do with your OS, your harddrive, your power supply, anything etc etc. The monitor is a stand alone unit fully capable of functioning on its own. Its especially helpful if your monitor allows you to adjust screen properties when its the only thing on (usually only quality monitors give you the On Screen Display with no signal). Psylo, you said you have had to push your video card in all the way before? Or you just did that once to make sure? If it budged at all, thats a bad thing. All your peripherals should always be 100% in contact. If your video card likes to come loose, dont screw it in. My card used to do this, the metal bracket that holds it in place was too stiff and would actualy pull the card out of socket, so i just stopped screwing it in, works perfectly.
If your OS can boot, and you have memorized the keystroke sequence to shut it down, you can rule out power supply and most any hardware problem besides the video card. Now, are you often performing a hard reboot? As in, just slamming the reset key? When you eventually get a picture, are you running in safe mode? The computer will do this if it detects multiple unsuccessfuly boots. If it finally boots after 3 times as if nothing happened, which is VERY ODD, then we need some system specifics here.
OS (version + service packs)
Video card (driver version + manufacturer too)
If i were you, i'd try removing the video driver altogether and setting it as standard VGA and see how it boots with that a few times. You might even want to go in and delete your video cards relic drivers, all the .dll's and .vxd's that look similar to the installation files which could be causing conflicts residing on your system. WARNING!! Make sure you feel you are only deleting the right ones! Dont delete eveyr .dll or .vxd in your system directory. But if you have a nVidia based card, its pretty easy to assume all the nv***.dll files belong to it.
Take it from there. This is of course after a final inspection of all your connections and plugs. When you pull out the computer to check all this, leave it out. Dont disturb it or potentially reloosen the cable by pushing it back under your desk or something. You want a nice clean undisturbed testing enviroment each and every time. Last thing you want to find out is that your video cable comes loose when it hits the back of the wall by simply pushing your tower in, and go through all this hassle.
Btw, it wouldnt hurt to go into bios after you try some video driver changes, and set everything to Fail Safe options. You could have had some video tweaks in there that are playing hell with your system.
|
United States12281 Posts
On July 11 2004 17:55 NoobSaibot wrote:
nononono, youre all wrong. Someone already pointed out just now, that the monitor should be able to display a screen even from bios, which has nothing to do with your OS, your harddrive, your power supply, anything etc etc. The monitor is a stand alone unit fully capable of functioning on its own. Its especially helpful if your monitor allows you to adjust screen properties when its the only thing on (usually only quality monitors give you the On Screen Display with no signal). Psylo, you said you have had to push your video card in all the way before? Or you just did that once to make sure? If it budged at all, thats a bad thing. All your peripherals should always be 100% in contact. If your video card likes to come loose, dont screw it in. My card used to do this, the metal bracket that holds it in place was too stiff and would actualy pull the card out of socket, so i just stopped screwing it in, works perfectly.
If your OS can boot, and you have memorized the keystroke sequence to shut it down, you can rule out power supply and most any hardware problem besides the video card. Now, are you often performing a hard reboot? As in, just slamming the reset key? When you eventually get a picture, are you running in safe mode? The computer will do this if it detects multiple unsuccessfuly boots. If it finally boots after 3 times as if nothing happened, which is VERY ODD, then we need some system specifics here.
OS (version + service packs)
Video card (driver version + manufacturer too)
If i were you, i'd try removing the video driver altogether and setting it as standard VGA and see how it boots with that a few times. You might even want to go in and delete your video cards relic drivers, all the .dll's and .vxd's that look similar to the installation files which could be causing conflicts residing on your system. WARNING!! Make sure you feel you are only deleting the right ones! Dont delete eveyr .dll or .vxd in your system directory. But if you have a nVidia based card, its pretty easy to assume all the nv***.dll files belong to it.
Take it from there. This is of course after a final inspection of all your connections and plugs. When you pull out the computer to check all this, leave it out. Dont disturb it or potentially reloosen the cable by pushing it back under your desk or something. You want a nice clean undisturbed testing enviroment each and every time. Last thing you want to find out is that your video cable comes loose when it hits the back of the wall by simply pushing your tower in, and go through all this hassle.
Btw, it wouldnt hurt to go into bios after you try some video driver changes, and set everything to Fail Safe options. You could have had some video tweaks in there that are playing hell with your system.
The reason I said it was a power supply issue was because it sounded similar to my problem, where the machine doesn't POST and never starts up or feeds video to the monitor. Apparently the two problems aren't as related as I thought they were.
|
well the interesting part is hes not just guessing hes able to boot into windows. Hes memorized how to shut it back down blindly. He can even launch apps, so we know his processor, bios, motherboard, and harddrive are all functioning. Windows is a very delicate OS, you wouldnt get this kind of effectiveness out of it if there were a foul PS or something else causing unusual errors on the hardware side.
|
it would be nice if you have another video card to try out too. do you? Your video card itself could be potentially shot, have bad memory, bad conductor to the agp slot, etc etc. These are things the bios cannot detect, nor windows. They only detect the presence of a device. If you have another computer, you could also put the weird video card in that, and see how it functions.
|
psylo's problem should be solved in like 2 minutes by anybody who knows what he's doing. so sad... 8[
|
Hmmm... Ok, this is a very stupid suggestion, but I _actually_ encountered that at my parents' comp and the effects were completely identical.
Is there any chance your power button is stuck or your power button is close to your reset button and they get stuck together? It's a purely mechanical matter, if the reset button sticks in the "reset" position, the comp is going to keep resetting and resetting and resetting and it will never actually get to the POST (Power On Self-Test) procedure. Same with the power button, although in case of the power button it would've probably blown up your power supply already. So, before you start checking your OS, HDD, RAM, CPU, cooler, graphics card, power supply etc., first check for the possibility of such mechanical defects.
|
On July 11 2004 18:25 Asta wrote:
psylo's problem should be solved in like 2 minutes by anybody who knows what he's doing. so sad... 8[
That's incredibly stupid on so many levels. The fact that if you know what you're doing so much to the point where you can judge other people, and yet you're unable to help him contradicts yourself. The fact is there can be tons of problems that cause his computer to act as it does, and it's hard without being there to be able to interpret what's causing the problem. I personally think it's the video drivers. However for those who are saying it can't be the hard drive, you're wrong. Where do you think the CPU accesses those drivers?
Psylo, update the video drivers and don't shut your PC off incorrectly.
|
United States12281 Posts
On July 11 2004 18:31 Ilintar wrote:
Hmmm... Ok, this is a very stupid suggestion, but I _actually_ encountered that at my parents' comp and the effects were completely identical.
Is there any chance your power button is stuck or your power button is close to your reset button and they get stuck together? It's a purely mechanical matter, if the reset button sticks in the "reset" position, the comp is going to keep resetting and resetting and resetting and it will never actually get to the POST (Power On Self-Test) procedure. Same with the power button, although in case of the power button it would've probably blown up your power supply already. So, before you start checking your OS, HDD, RAM, CPU, cooler, graphics card, power supply etc., first check for the possibility of such mechanical defects.
I really really doubt it, considering my Reset button isn't even enabled and I'm able to power the machine off and on when I want =)
|
Where do you think the CPU accesses those drivers? What do you think the operating system does when it cant read a file?
|
On July 11 2004 19:51 NoobSaibot wrote: What do you think the operating system does when it cant read a file?
My point was that there still is a possibillity that it could be the hard drive.
|
Thnx for the help guys. All the hardware seems fine: cables connected, cards are in tight, its cleaned out. I will update my drivers later tonight and see how that goes.
My comp has also been buggy, and I'm not sure if it is related. It will freeze up, and sometimes take 5 to 20 minutes to get rolling again. For example, if I go to open explorer, my comp will freeze for 5 minutes, then carry on as usual. This happends mostly when I have a file sharing service running(mostly bittorent). When it freezes, bittorent will show that I am not sharing any files, as if my connection is down, altough the connection manager, my modem, and comcast say otherwise.
|
so i finally opened my comp
so much dust
tryied cleaning as much as possible by vacuuming very lightly... couldnt get to a lot of the deep places
also i cant seem to take out my main fan in the back of the computer... looks really dirty but theres warnings on the box its in saying not to open the cover and shit T_T
gonna get a new power plug soon --;
|
dont worry about the fan in your power supply. Buy a can of compressed air from the grocery store stationary isle or something.
psylo, are you good with keeping a system clean of spyware and viruses? Download something called HIJACKTHIS.exe so we can get a look at everything that starts up in your system. You could take a simpler root and run msconfig.exe (download it if you need to) and see whats in your autostart registry.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
