I fix PCs for a living. This is for a customer situation.
Onboard video broke, black monitor screen, normal boot-up sounds. Monitor works fine when connected to another desktop PC.
THE QUESTION IS HOW TO GET THE PC TO USE A NEW VIDEO CARD **WITHOUT** DISABLING THE ONBOARD VIDEO CARD DRIVER ETC ETC as the latter can not be done as we have no video !!
Perusing various search matches on this EE site tells me
If video card is PCI, there is NO solution (EXCEPT something about removing the CMOS battery or changjing the CMOS jumpers ????). IF THIS WILL FIX MY PROBLEM PLEASE SPELL OUT WHAT TO DO IN DETAIL.
If the video card is AGP, Windows or the BIOS or whatever will use the AGP card and NOT use the onboard video due to some default behavior of something. There are several posts to that effect on this web site.
THE PROBLEM IS THAT MY CUSTOMER'S mother board has **NO** AGP slots; it has two x8 PCI express slots and one x16 PCI express slot. And he has bought a $200 x16 PCI express card.
SO THE QUESTION IS DOES THE BIOS OR WIN XP SP2 BY DEFAULT USE A PCI-EXPRESS CARD INSTEAD OF THE ONBOARD VIDEO or DOES THAT JUST HOLD TRUE FOR AGP CARDS?
Because if we cannot solve this problem my customer must either throw out a 1 1/2 year old $1000 custom PC
OR
get a new motherboard which costs $300-$500 if I do the replacement. AND NO the PC is not under warranty anymore.
Motherboard is EVGA nForce4 SLI mobo from Jetway. A review with all specs and details and pictures etc is at
www.nvnews.net/reviews/evga_nforce4_sli_edition_mainboard/index.shtml . OS is Windows XP SP2.
Regards,
Mike
PS Some smart person might ask, Mike, what happens when he installs the x16 PCI express card??
The answer is PC starts for a SECOND and stops and no video. He removes new card, same result WHEN BEFORE IT MADE ALL THE RIGHT BOOTUP SOUNDS (but no video). Now obviously putting in a new card and removing it does not make the PC boot for a second and die?? It should do the same thing it did as before.
RED HERRING / WILDCARD: He put the x16 card in the x8 slot and booted. COULD THAT MISTAKE DAMAGE THE MOBO AND CREATE THE ENTIRE PROBLEM HE NOW HAS?
Note: I had him install the x16 board in the x16 slot and still no video and boot still lasts less than 1 second. BUT IF THE MISTAKE ABOVE DAMAGED THE MOBO .....
So my theory is
(a) Bad mobo
OR
(b) Bad Power supply that just happened to go bad when he put in the PCI E card (by some incredible coincidence).
THIS ENTIRE POST IS BECAUSE OF THE TINY POSSIBILITY OF (b) (a 2nd problem) occuring.
Customer to me: So if the Power supply is bad AND you put in a new good one, the video will reappear with my new card?
Me: I OBVIOUSLY CAN NOT ANSWER THAT QUESTION UNLESS SOMEOME RESPONDS TO THIS POST, CAN I? And if I do not answer THAT question, my customer will NOT HIRE ME. DO YOU NOW UNDERSTAND WHY I NEED ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS IN THIS POST ?
Regards,
Mike
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