No Monitor Display

Jayson112 · #1 10-19-2008, 06:01 PM

Hey guys, when I start up my computer everything inside appears to be running fine, the green light on the motherboard turns on, all the fans spin, but for some reason (seemingly completely random) my monitor wont turn on. Now, I have already done a lot of basic troubleshooting and have searched endless forums but none of there solutions or problems completely aligned with mine. I'll give some background first on how this problem came to be.

So last night I successfully set up an XP/Vista dual boot. I installed Vista on what I'll call hard drive C, I had Xp running smoothly on hard drive B, and I store my personal files like music, gamesaves, chat logs, etc on hard drive A. For the longest time I had hard drives A and B in my computer working fine. My computer is custom built and less than a year old, and is a fairly powerful machine.

Anyway, I added hard drive C last night and got the vista dual boot set up and working properly, but I wanted to move my personal files on hard drive A to hard d rive B because its 200 GB bigger, and then install XP on hard drive A because it doesnt require as much room as all my media and such. I went about getting all my files backed up before I reformatted hard drive B (XP) to be a blank drive. I planned on then booting into Vista to transfer the files on A to B, and then I would install Xp on A and be satisfied. All went well until I formatted drive B, after which to my confusion I would get the error message DISK BOOT FAILURE, PLEASE INSERT SYSTEM DISK. So apparently Vista doesnt want to boot anymore. I did some troubleshooting, changed the vista drive to highest boot priority, even removed the blan drive and my storage drive (A) leaving only C in my computer. Still no luck. So I decided to try and install XP in Vistas place so I could get things done (I was just using Vista for fun and to check out Direct X 10, I prefer XP). After the format and auto reboot, and after the startup i got a similar message to before something like disk(0)partition(1) failed to boot and it mentioned NTLDR (I forgot the exact error message). Incredibly frustrated at this point I removed all the hard drive and plugged the old Xp drive back in (B) (which is the only SATA drive I use, the others are IDE) and somewhere along the line my computers monitors just stopped displaying anything at all. Note that now I dont have ANY operating system at all, and I think that may be why the monitors wont display, but since I cant even get to the BIOS now because I cant see what Im doing, Im basically stranded and stumped. I see a lot of internet solutions blaming hard ware but all my hard ware should be fine and I think this is a software issue. Can anybody try and shed some light on this situation for me? (by the way I have two monitors and neither will display anything so I know its not a bad monitor)

StaplesEZTECH · #2 10-19-2008, 10:34 PM

To be tottally honest with you try this please Im only saying this because its fixed several computers I've delt with in the past.

Step1 TAKE OUT ANY HARDWARE IN PCI SLOT other than GRAPHICS CARD TRY BOOTING AGAIN.
Step2 MAKE SURE ALL YOUR CONNECTIONS ARE MADE PROPERLY AND RECONNECT THEM JUST TO BE SURE, RAM STICKS REMOVE ALL BUT ONE, AND BOOT AGAIN.
Step3 TRY ANOTHER RAM STICK. TAKE OUT YOUR FIRST ONE. BOOT AGAIN.
Step4 REMOVE ALL HARDRIVES AND TRY TO BOOT IF YOUR BIOS STILL DOESNT BOOT UP ITS NOT A HARDRIVE ISSUE THATS CAUSING YOUR COMPUTER TO NOT SHOW BIOS.
Step5 NOW AFTER THE HD TEST AND STILL NO BIOS STICK IT BACK IN AND TURN ON YOUR COMPUTER WITH YOUR HAND ON YOUR HD INSPECT IT FOR HARD KNOCKS NOT TYPICAL DURING NORMAL STARTUP I.E BEFORE WINDOWS IS ACTULLY LOADED OR LOADING OFF IT.
Step6 IF YOUR USING A PCI,VGA,PCI E CARD FOR YOUR GRAPHICS CARD AND YOU DO HAVE AN ON BOARD CARD PLEASE REFRAIN FROM USING YOUR PCI/VGA CARD AND USE ON BOARD DRIVERS OR NO DRIVERS IT WILL STILL BOOT MINIMALY.
Step7 IF ALL OF THIS FAILS YOU SHOULD THINK ABOUT REPLACEING YOUR CMOS BATTERY ITS A CR2032 BATTERY AND COST ABOUT 3.50$ AND SOME AND I SAY SOME BECAUSE SOME MOTHERBOARDS REQUIRE THIS BATTERY IN WORKING ORDER FOR BIOS TO FUNCTION!
Step8 UNFORTUNITLY UNLESS I WAS LOOKING AT THE MACHINE IM LOST IN THE SAUCE AS TO WHAT ELSE I WOULD DO BUT BEING THAT I WORK AT STAPLES AS AN EZTECH ASSOCIATE I WOULD THEN PERFORM A DIAGNOSTIC WITH PC DOCTOR ON ALL YOUR HARDWARE. AND DETERMINE WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS BUT TO BE HONEST I BET YOU ITS SOMETHING AS STUPID AS A BAD SOUND CARD OR MODEM LAN OR DIALUP ^^ HOPEFULLY I HELPED.

I WILL STRESS THIS VERY VERY VERY VERY HARSHLY TRIAL AND ERROR IS A FANTASTIC PROCESS WHICH WILL LEAD TO PROCESS OF ELIMINATION THIS WILL EVENTULLY GET FIXED THIS WAY.

also bear in mind theres even the small chance you may have short circuited the mobo with all your inside tampering. hopefully not the case.

Jayson112 · #3 10-20-2008, 04:01 AM

Hey man, thanks for your reply. I tried a good deal of trial and error initially but nothing seemed to do the trick. I replaced the cmos battery, tried resetting the cmos, and eventually just went to Frys and bought a new motherboard, which eliminated the problem (I'm actually quite happy thats all I had to buy). I'm going to get my hard drives set up properly now and then put the old board back in one more time to be 100% sure it was the problem (Ive read things about the board having issues, usually driver related)

By the way the board in question is the ASUS P5N-E SLI. I'll post some conclusions when I get everything running smoothly in case others have had similar problems with this board.

Jayson112 · #4 10-20-2008, 12:29 PM

So I put the old board back in, fired the computer up and the board just gives off a long constant beep, still no display. I think I've ruled out the possibility of faulty hardware, except of course the motherboard. Im confused as to why its beeping now as opposed to before? It makes me wonder if the board isnt completely dead but just isn't happy with something.

StaplesEZTECH · #5 10-20-2008, 07:14 PM

beeping usually signifys RAM IS NOT IN PROPERLY check your ram.

Jayson112 · #6 10-20-2008, 08:09 PM

The beeping was a mistake on my part, I forgot to plug the PCI-E power plug into my graphics card. Oddly enough my computer is now up and running on the old board, so I returned the other board and am still kind of mystified as to what the problem was int he first place lol.

I'd like to add one more little request for help before my computer is 100%. For some reason the drive I intend to install Vista on only shows up in the BIOS when it's the master drive. I have removed the jumper (the HDD says No Jumper = Slave) and plugged it into the slave drive and I cant for the life of me get it to detect. I know its not a power issue because I swapped power plugs with the working Master drive and it still doesnt detect. Any suggestions? (And yes the IDE is plugged in)

StaplesEZTECH · #7 10-21-2008, 08:29 AM

Vista has to be your primary OS meaning it being installed first, then XP and to be totally honest with you im not entirely sure you can dual boot Vista and XP on seperate drives.
someone let him know for sure please.
What might have to happen and im actully kind of sure of this is Vista has to be set to MASTER on jumper settings and XP on slave/cs
you need to edit your boot panel download easybcd and you should be able to detect both OS if you dont then you add a entry its very easy just find out what drive is what and make a new one and name it what you want ^^

StaplesEZTECH · #8 10-21-2008, 08:48 AM

SORRY FOR DOUBLE POST BUT HERES MORE INFO AND STEP BY STEP TOO

http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Windows+XP

Jayson112 · #9 10-21-2008, 11:40 AM

The problem above turned out to be a bad IDE cable (which worked fine before this problem), I swapped it out and now both drives detect fine.

I'm pretty sure I can get a dual boot working fine as I had one working before with the XP/Master Vista/Slave setup. When I uninstalled XP thats when everything went wrong. In retrospect, apparently deleting XP confused my motherboard and it didn't know how to boot, although, I still don't understand why I could buy a new board and everything works again. Is the boot info stored in the BIOS or just the OS? I'm starting to think if I had reset the BIOS right after the initial problem I could have saved the frustration but I don't really know much about how the motherboard and Operating systems work together. Anyway, thanks alot for your help Staples, I'm up and running again

StaplesEZTECH · #10 10-21-2008, 12:40 PM

when you uninstalled win xp its loader ntdlr was corrupted if you put in your vista disk and used its repair wizard this problem would fixed itself.

all except the fact that your cables where broke =/

ANYWHOS CONGRATS MAN^^