Okay, I'm stumped on this one. I'm working on an old Gateway 510S computer that was recently shipped to a friend of mine. The original owner, a friend of his, claimed that it worked fine before being shipped, but now there is no output to the video card. The power supply comes on, all fans start spinning, but no signal is out put to the monitor. It's got an integrated video card with the motherboard, but I have ensured that all the other cards and RAM are properly seated, and in fact swapped the RAM around. Nothing. I've also tried a different power supply and have also added a PCI video card. No dice. One thing that I did notice was a flashing red light by the CMOS battery. I took the battery out for several minutes, replaced it, and the light stopped flashing but the system didn't boot. I've since replaced the battery with a new one, and still no luck. I'm completely stumped on this one outside of general motherboard failure, but the odd thing is that it worked fine before shipment. I've never dealt with a computer this stubborn.
First, check your BIOS settings to ensure that it's set to read the external card first, my old motherboard defaulted to run Internal graphics unless you told it otherwise, even if a card was in the slot. If thats a no go, check to see if the intergrated graphics work.
Maybe there's something I'm missing, but how can he check the BIOS settings if there is no output to his display?? Try removing the RAM, Hard drive, optical drives, and any other add in cards. Leave just the CPU and it's cooler, and power up. You should at least get some beep codes to tell you the RAM is missing. If not, then I'd say the motherboard or processor are screwed. If it comes to that, remove the CPU and boot to see if you get any beeps for no CPU. Also, make sure you have an internal speaker attached to the motherboard.
Good Point, but if he hasnt checked his intergrated graphics that could be the whole problem, and it's a bit easier to rule out than going barbones.
I've tried disconnecting the drives and all other PCI cards, but I haven't tried to boot it without RAM to see if I get the error code beep. I'll give that a shot this evening when I get home from work. But yeah, kind of hard for me to change any BIOS settings without being able to see it. I did flip the jumper to reset the BIOS to defaults, but that had no effect as well.
well i tell u what mine is doing the same thing. Im running a asus pk5 black pearl with a Q6600 cpu 9600gt gfx card 2gig of ocz reaper 1066 mhz ram all was working fine intill i moved to tower to a diffrent part of the house. then it wouldnt boot or take the moniter out of standby. fearing that i had shorted out the motherbored i sent it off to were i gt it from yoyotech and after a week they bench tested it and it worked fine. so wen i got it back i rebuilt it but still no joy. im thinking its a ram issue but not had this problem before and all componants are brand new. plzzzzzzzzz help oh and how do i sort it out without it booting as the is no onbored grfx????
I gave up on all other options beside the motherboard, to be honest. That's all that it could have been. So, I'm just going to put a faster motherboard/processor/RAM combination in there and be done with it.
