I am kind of confused, With the new AGP card in.... You can or can't see the POST (Are you able to hit F2 and get into the bios with the new card in?)
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Pavilion CMOS Setup Utility - how do I access it?
I have an HP Pavilion 780n. A few weeks ago the video started shutting down unexpectedly. I pulled out the 64Mb AGP adapter and replaced it with a 16Mb PCI adapter. It now works fine, and I don't really notice any video quality issues. However, wanting to get back to where I was, I purchased a new 64Mb AGP adapter and plugged it in, replacing the PCI adapter. Upon boot, I get no signal on the monitor. I am now thinking that a) the new AGP adapter is incompatable with my motherboard. The adapter I bought is Diamond Stealth S70 Gforce2. b) the AGP slot on the motherboard is bad, or 3) I haven't configured the BIOS/CMOS/device drivers correctly for the new AGP adapter. The video adapter manual says to access the CMOS setup utility and make a few changes. I can't seem to do this on the Pavilion. I can get to the BIOS by pressing F1 or F2 on boot, but can't get to the CMOS setup utility. My thinking however is that with no video signal, the problem is more serious and that I am not going to be getting to the BIOS, CMOS or anything until I resolve the signal issue. Btw, I am wondering if I should go buy a higher bandwidth PCI card an be done with this, since I am not a game user. Thougths?
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Answers
All - I can get into the BIOS with the old PCI adapter just fine - simply can't find the CMOS Setup Utility from there.
With the new AGP adapter, the PC boots fine but it has no video signal whatsoever. I know it boots fine because I kept the PCI adapter installed on one iteration of tries and while the video was black and the system booted, I switched the video cable to the PCI card and all was fine. Then when i switched it back to the AGP card, no signal again.
I have not tried getting into the BIOS with the new adapter because there is no video signal.
<<All - I can get into the BIOS with the old PCI adapter just fine - simply can't find the CMOS Setup Utility from there.>>
CMOS Setup Utility & BIOS = same thing
<<I know it boots fine because I kept the PCI adapter installed on one iteration of tries and while the video was black and the system booted, I switched the video cable to the PCI card and all was fine>>
Did it load the AGP Video card driver? Did it see it at all? If so you should be able to enable it through the Display properties settings tab and change the res down to like 800x600 16bit then swap the cables and test it.
<<I have not tried getting into the BIOS with the new adapter because there is no video signal. >>
Usually if the card is the only one in the system and it doesn't show the bios/post boot , then somethings wrong with it or the monitor since there are no drivers at this point in time.
<<It sounds like the primary display is not being switched to AGP. With the PCI card, get into the BIOS and look for a setting to use AGP instead of PCI as the primary display. After setting that, shut down and switch cards>>
I thought that too but at the same time, if there is no PCI card in I thought it reverted to AGP regardless if it detects a card in the AGP port.
One other thing you could try ( didn't see it mentioned, but perhaps I just missed it) Seeing as you have the cover off the computer, you should see a battery somewhere on the motherboard. (about the size of a quarter) Unplug the computer, remove the battery, push your power button a few times, and wait about 20 minutes. Put the battery back in, and plug the computer back in, and see if it will boot with the AGP card. You are basically resetting the BIOS/CMOS to the factory settings. This may just put the default display adaptor back to AGP. (if this is what's causing the problem)
Good Luck!
it was simple...I installed the functioning PCI card and got into the BIOS setup. Once there, I switched the default video port from PCI to AGP. Then I took out the PCI adapter and replaced it with my new AGP adapter. Then I rebooted and all was fine. I knew immediately that it was going to be fine when I heard no POST beeps. Prior to this change, I was hearing four consequetive beeps. Thanks all for the help.
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by: CallandorPosted on 2005-01-14 at 07:16:49ID: 13044714
If you can still see the POST messages when the machine boots up, very likely all you have to do is change the video driver. Before you change video cards, switch the video driver to standard VGA (or delete the old one), shutdown, change the video card, start up and your new hardware should be detected. At this point, you provide the drivers for the video card.