Thread: Computer Question????

Try your monitor on your sisters computer, try your sisters on your computer...

for starters, what color is the light on the monitor? If in 'stand by mode' mine is amber, when powered up, green.

Is the cord plugged n?
Is the vid card seated?

How old is the monitor?
I had that problem, but it was 'cause my card wasn't seated correctly. I pulled it out, re seated it and it works fine.

Normally you will have a series of beep codes, or just a double-beep if something is wrong with the hardware inside the computer. If it sounds like Windows is starting up normally, then its probably a Windows problem or dead monitor, but switching them will tell us more.

Monitor works fine on sis computer. I have taken out the video card in out many times already I even took my whole system apart piece by piece and put it back together but nothing. I don’t get more than one beep either. My monitor never starts so I never get a color screen, you know when you leave your system one for a long time and your computer automatically turn off your monitor and you have to move the mouse so it powers back up, well that’s exactly what my monitor looks like when I turn my computer on.

Ok after double checking I’m not getting any beeps out of the motherboard, I’m really starting to think that it is my motherboard messed up. What do you think?

Normally you'd get a single BEEP if the PC speaker is hoooked up, since you've had your mobo apart you would have seen it, usually near the bottom right of the mobo, near where all the lights on the front of the case hookup.

What I meant was, have you tried your sisters, known good working monitor on your computer?

You could always try a PCI video card if your currently using AGP.

I think it's fried!

It can be the refresh rates. If your monitor doesnt suport the refresh rates that windows is setup to it will automaticly turn off when windows starts. If this is the case then get another monitor so you can check out if it works when windows loads up. If it does, change the refresh rates, if you dont know how go to control panel, then enter screen properties, then choose configuration, then choose monitor and there will be an option there to change refresh rates, then choose pretermined video card refresh rates o something like that ( sorry im translating my spanish windows version so the names may not be accurate), then reboot and try the other monitor.

http://www.tweaktown.com/document.ph...e=guide&dId=56

this link will help you further on so you can tweak your monitor to the maximum supported refreshrates ( its an important option it reduces eyestrain when you are in front of you monitor for long times)
hope it helps, good luck

True, however it would show BIOS info still if it was the refresh rate. Otherwise you could enter safe mode to fix that, and you would receive a screen on your monitor briefly that would say monitor out of range or OVER FREQ on most anything modern.

guess i should read a bit more before posting , the other thing that comes to my mind is that the card is not properly seated on the slot, or perhaps your video card is dying.

Possible, but he has tried two cards, I say swap the friggin monitors already!

1. Bad connections (boards, RAM, CPU)
2. Wrong jumper settings
3. BIOS setup
4. Incompatible hardware

i think it would be good to know how this problem started, like if it started suddeny or you moved some bios settings ,anyways check that every cable from your pc is conected

Had you been playing with its innards prior to it not working? Or was it just a "one day it stopped working" kind of thing?

Originally posted by Mudge
Possible, but he has tried two cards, I say swap the friggin monitors already!

I agree. Swap monitors if you have another one.

You would get a beep code only if the motherboard thinks that you do not have a monitor or video card installed.

To see if the motherboard is reporting correctly disconect the monitor or take out the video card and boot it up. If you still get no beep code it could be the mother board. If you get a beep code try putting the video card in another slot on the motherboard

How funny I have one of the Amd Fug-g mother boards thats been recalled the mouse connection has been going out but

Today guess what no picture on the monitor I have been jacking around with plug for a yr. I would guess thats what it is

I can't beleive I put up with that for a yr but after my expedition to down town LA and back 1 wreck made it a 4 hr. fight 3 miles from home took me 1 hr. but the new board was only $59.00 dollars

Could be the power supply is going bad. If the standby current on the 5V has gone down enough the board turns on but in sleep mode resulting in no Video.

I've seen it many times expecially with the new boards and processors on the market the last 2-3 yrs.

Well what happened was I took it appart for cleaning and when I pluged back up nothing. I figure maybe some static got to it. I have cleaned it before but I guess I didn't get way with it this time. I never touched any jumper or anything so it can't be that. I also tried my syster monitor and nothing. I never did try PCI video card maybe that will work, mybe I'll try that some other time to fix that comp for my syster, the one she has is old and olny about 366MHz. So what I did was order some new hardware, is not bad going from 850Mhz to 2.0GHz. Ordered new motherboard, CPU and Memory. Thanks to all of you who tried to help me

Originally posted by dvlmn666
Could be the power supply is going bad. If the standby current on the 5V has gone down enough the board turns on but in sleep mode resulting in no Video.

I've seen it many times expecially with the new boards and processors on the market the last 2-3 yrs.

Interesting, I guess we'll all see what is it when my new stuff gets here. Oh man my dad is going kill me if this is not it and I have to ask for more money for a power supply

This is what I ordered from newegg.com

13-131-436 MB NFORCE2 A7N8X DELUXE ASUS RTL (I hear is a relatively good motherboard)

19-103-336 CPU AMD|2400/266 ATHLON XP TBRED RT (from 850MHz to 2000Mhz can't wait to see what can it do )

20-141-302 DDRAM 256M|DDR333 PC-2700 -K % ( Ordered memory bacause my old mother board uses SDRAM PC133 memory sticks and this one don't)

99-888-006 TOOL ACC|ANTI-STATIC WRIST STRAP% ( yup taking extra precaution this time)

(have not read all replies yet...)

could be the resolution is too high for the monitor that was set on the vid card - although you should get a message about that on the actual monitor when you try to start it up it should say something like "out of scan range" not just stay blank.

start up the computer with the monitor unpluged, after a min, plug the monitor in see if it kicks in. Make sure u did not turn down the brightness and contrast on the monitor either.

as for beep codes

1 long beep = means no memory or bad memory

1 beeeeeep, follwed by 3 beeps - means bd vid card - or not seated right.

the pc speaker should be plugged in by defualt unless someone unplugged it

as said - try another monitor on the system or swap vid cards between computers.

Also, make sure no pins are bent on the monitor cable.

Originally posted by KataMaStEr
This is what I ordered from newegg.com

13-131-436 MB NFORCE2 A7N8X DELUXE ASUS RTL (I hear is a relatively good motherboard)

19-103-336 CPU AMD|2400/266 ATHLON XP TBRED RT (from 850MHz to 2000Mhz can't wait to see what can it do )

20-141-302 DDRAM 256M|DDR333 PC-2700 -K % ( Ordered memory bacause my old mother board uses SDRAM PC133 memory sticks and this one don't)

99-888-006 TOOL ACC|ANTI-STATIC WRIST STRAP% ( yup taking extra precaution this time)

Get 512mb memory - it is so cheap and if u plan on running XP - u will be happier.

the mobo is good - decent board - alot of people have had to do some "prep" work before hand to get things running propely.

For power supplies the actual Watts as in 400, 450 does not really matter, what you want to see is the 3.3 +5v out put.
for a pentium 4 it is recommended that no less then 180w - amd not sure - to be safe, find a PSU that has over 200w total.

some 350w power supplies are more powerful then the 520w ones out.

as that W rating the 350, or 500 is simply the maximum amoutn reached while testing that unit i think over a few days period or something.

As for the rist strap - simply touch your power supply while it is plugged in to be grounded and do not work near carpeting. - work on tile or wood where u can not get static build up - i hanel memory like it is nothing and not once fried a single stick.


P.S. - what about Vid card / hard drive?

Originally posted by dvlmn666
Could be the power supply is going bad. If the standby current on the 5V has gone down enough the board turns on but in sleep mode resulting in no Video.

Good one, I pushed a 230W power supply for awhile on my duron box, finally upgraded to a 350w that I think does 30/35A on the +5v side (I forget) and power delivery was much more stable. I have burned out fan headers on multiple boards, they suck, so I would not be too supprised if todays video cards burn out stuff too - some of them even have dedicated plugs for extra power.

Originally posted by Mr.Guvernment
Get 512mb memory - it is so cheap and if u plan on running XP - u will be happier.




P.S. - what about Vid card / hard drive?

I ordered two 256mb sticks I still have one more slot, when I get more money I'll buy a 512mb to be at about 1gb

Video card is fine and hard drive is fine

Some motherboards drop the RAM latency down when you add a 3rd stick, crap 512 is way enough IMO. I run 256MB still and I run plenty of things, I just dont run 50 friggin programs at once, I try to keep my stuff lean and mean.

i got 512 pc1066 rambus and i max that out easy - got to get another 512 stick

as for ahrd drives and video card - which ones are you getting?


as for ram latency dropping, never heard of that - beside u can set it manually in the bios anyways if it does

Without wpcredit, some boards will not allow RAM latency adjustment, it depends on the MFG but yes, if there are 3 slots on the motherboard they had problems keeping them all synched when operating at peak speads. There is also the memory interleave setting which I do not use, but is on by default on many boards, speed impacts are minor but they are there.

I use 256 and run plenty of apps, but I am NOT a pig, I want lean and fast computers. If you need 512, then I assume you are a db person, which I am not other than the dbs I admin at work. I play games as well, and dont need more than 256.