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socrossFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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How to enable a graphics card slot when there is no on-board video?

We have a brand new Lenovo P330 Thinkstation, with a Xeon processor that does not support on-board graphics (so the two display port sockets are "blocked off" with a label). The unit was ordered without a separate graphics card, but when we fit a graphics card (which is known to be compatible and is known to be working) it does not show up and we get no video output. I suspect the problem may be to do with a BIOS setting but we have no video, so we can't access the BIOS. We have contacted Lenovo but they are being very slow in dealing with this issue. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we can get out of this "Catch 22"?
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socross
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By way of further background, we have tried the display ports but there is no video from them.
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Dr. Klahn

If the system has PCI slots, dig out an old PCI video card (or buy one for a few bucks from your local computer recycler) and see if that works.  I suspect that the video card you're using is PCI-e, not PCI.  It might make a difference.

Again, if the system has PCI slots, stick a PCI POST card into the system and see if it counts.  If it doesn't count during the POST, the system may be dead ... and that would certainly cause a video failure.

If the system has diagnostic LEDs, check the constellation to see if an error is being reported.
By default, you don't have to do any setttings for any PC/workstation that only has the PCI-e slot as a graphic option (otherwise, you could potentially dig a hole you can't get out of).
Therefore, it must be something else.
Can you follow these very basic steps to diagnose? https://support.lenovo.com/nl/en/solutions/migr-4xvqal
Mostly interested if there's a display, or LED arrangements with the POST codes, or audible beeps.
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Steve
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Does that graphics card require additional power? My motherboard supports onboard graphics but the CPU doesn't, so I have to plug the video into one of the graphics card ports and not the ports on the ATX backplane.
Remove the BIOS backup battery, short the BIOS reset connector pins, wait two minutes, then replace the BIOS reset jumper and the BIOS battery.  It's unlikely, but the BIOS may have been misconfigured at the factory.
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ASKER

Thanks to all who contributed. In the end the problem was that we simply did not have a compatible graphics card. Eventually we found a detailed list from Lenovo of which cards are compatible, sourced one of those and bingo, everything works. We've fed back to Lenovo that they should make it much clearer in their documentation and on-line purchasing configurator exactly what the restrictions are vis a vis certain processors which do not support on-board graphics and the very short list of compatible graphics cards. Thanks again to all contributors.