GameBanshee Forums

Alright, here's the problem. I ecently went to a LAN party (within the last two hours, I got back), in which my computer was working fine. No problems, whatsoever. Anyway, once I got home, my monitor ceased to receive the signal from my computer, giving me only a balnk screen (nothing, only black). My original thoughts was that something happend to the monitor cables, or the monitor itself, thus I tried out the other monitor in the house, but to no avail. So, I then checked out my card (Geforce 4 Ti 4200 64mb, which has worked flawlessly with my computer for the past 8 months), and saw no apparent damage, nor was it loose. As a precaution, I checked all the cables and connections, with nothing. Eventually (and this is what I'm doing now) I swapped cards, putting in my old Radeon 64mb card. This one, works.

Now, my question is this. Is there anything I may've have done, That I wouldn't see physically. And is there any ideas out there I could try to fix.

While I am technically skilled, please treat me as an idiot with this one, because I don't deal with hardware issues like this often.

Have you try to slightly shift the card position ? My old Riva TNT2 used to have that prob, and seems like the AGP slot & the card got a bit issue in term of connectivity. I simply pull it up a bit or press it a bit and it work fine again.

<EDIT>Worse to worse, borrow a friend PC and plug yer Geforce4. if nothing is wrong then it's the AGP slot connectivity got prob.

Yeah. Just try reseating your current card, in transit to and from LAN parties I've found that your cards can come a bit loose very easily, even if they dont seem it, a good hard shove works wonders. But if you've tried that as you seem to suggest, were you getting any POST beeps?

I don't think there is an issue with the AGP slot, as I'm running my older card in it now, but it is worth a shot to try again, I suppose. As for the POST beeps, what exactly do you mean by those? The computer itself seemed to be running fine (aside from the fact my monitor wasn't getting a signel).

Originally posted by Aegis
As for the POST beeps, what exactly do you mean by those? The computer itself seemed to be running fine (aside from the fact my monitor wasn't getting a signel).

That is somewhat odd...for example, on my BIOS (Award I think) if I don't plug in the graphics card at all, instead of one beep at startup (standard POST - power on self test) I'd get one long beep and two short beeps - standard "something wrong with graphics card" beeps. The only way I can think of that the computer would POST correctly and still give no monitor signal would be if the cable wasn't in correctly, or if there was a fault between the VGA socket and the rest of the card. I would definitely suggest trying the card in a friend's computer, but as I've had a nasty experience with this I'd say make sure he knows the risks involved and is willing to do it...chances that you'll break any of his equipment are very slim, but somehow I managed to kill a friends' original GFX card by doing the swap thing...

You always want to swap with known-good components first.

Have you tried the monitor you took to the LAN party on another machine? You've swapped with another video card, and it works fine, so you can rule out your AGP slot and the monitor you used to test the ATI card.

That means the monitor you were using has gone bad, or your GeForce card has gone bad. Try putting the GeForce card in another machine to see if you are getting any video there.

When you first hooked up your original monitor with the GeForce card, you weren't getting any video, right? Not the POST screen and not the Windows splash screen, right? That means it's not your video drivers and it's not your Windows installation.

Not all motherboards have a "no video" POST beep code, you may want to check your documentation and it would probably be a good idea to flash your BIOS.

Well, once my friend gets off work, I'll be trying that. He has the exact same card as I do, so the drivers will al be there.

As for the monitor, I haven't tried it with other computers, but it works fine with my previous card. I think, though, the the problem is within the Gefore itself.

As for the Post beeps, I'll have to try that, because I wasn't really paying attention. I do already get two beeps, because I installed a new fan a while ago, and haven't bothered to tell the BIOS about it, but thats not a major problem, and one thats not fixed because I'm lazy in that regards, so that might interfere with the beeps for the card. I guess I'll tell it about the new fan, and see if the beeps come up with the Geforce.