No Display

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ian R
  • Start date Start date
I

Ian R

Hi

I'm helping a friend get his PC working.

His PC is has an ASUS P5RD1-V Deluxe which has an on board ATI Radeon
X300GPU.

The PC powers up but there is no display at all.

Ive tried taking out the RAM chips and reseating them - just trying one on
its own but still no display.

The board also has SVHS/component/composite outputs and I got nothing out of
these either.

I then fitted a PCI graphics card and got no display on that either.

I took out the hard drive to recover files from it and found that some files
had been written to the last date/time I powered up his PC. So something in
there must be working OK.

I just wondered if the CPU has failed in some way would it still power up?
and exhibit this fault?

I dont have another LGA775 board handy to try out the CPU.

I suspect its most likely a problem with the system board.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this.

Thanks for your time.

Ian
 
"Ian R" said:
Hi

I'm helping a friend get his PC working.

His PC is has an ASUS P5RD1-V Deluxe which has an on board ATI Radeon
X300GPU.

The PC powers up but there is no display at all.

Ive tried taking out the RAM chips and reseating them - just trying one on
its own but still no display.

The board also has SVHS/component/composite outputs and I got nothing out of
these either.

I then fitted a PCI graphics card and got no display on that either.

I took out the hard drive to recover files from it and found that some files
had been written to the last date/time I powered up his PC. So something in
there must be working OK.

I just wondered if the CPU has failed in some way would it still power up?
and exhibit this fault?

I dont have another LGA775 board handy to try out the CPU.

I suspect its most likely a problem with the system board.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this.

Thanks for your time.

Ian
Click to expand...

The simplest test to try:

0) Sit the motherboard on a telephone book with a cardboard cover.
That will insulate the bottom of the motherboard and avoid
problems with standoffs install in the wrong place.
1) Connect the main power connector and the ATX12V 2x2 square connector
that powers the processor. Without the ATX12V connected, the processor
cannot POST.
2) Install CPU+heatsink+fan.
3) Connect a power switch to the PANEL header. Or, if the motherboard
is sitting on a tabletop, you can take a screwdriver tip and make
a momentary contact to the two pins where the power switch would
normally go.
4) Connect the computer case speaker to the PANEL header. That is
so you can listen for a beep pattern.
5) Remove RAM, video card, disk drives cabling. The purpose of this
test is to listen for a beep pattern, a purposeful error indication.

Switch on the PSU at the back. Check to see if the green LED on the
motherboard lights up. That means you have +5VSB, which is necessary
for the motherboard to be able to turn on the power supply.

Use a (static electricity drained) screwdriver tip, to touch the
power switch pins. Or use the power switch from the case. A
momentary contact should start the board.

Does the PSU fan spin ?
Does the CPU fan spin ?
Do the fans only twitch for a fraction of a second ?
Does the green LED stay on steady the whole time, without
blinking or glitching ?

And finally, does it beep the "Missing RAM" beep patterh ?

If the board causes the computer speaker to beep, that needs
the CPU to execute some BIOS code, and program one of the
chips on the motherboard to drive the speaker. If you get
beeps, it means the processor is OK, and a certain portion
of the motherboard is working. To get to the speaker,
means the processor used the Northbridge and Southbridge, and
the Super I/O chip, to get to the speaker.

If the BIOS chip is corrupted for some reason (like a bad
flash), that can stop the board from beeping or POSTing. A
bad processor socket could also cause problems, and the socket
should be visually inspected before the processor goes in.
You should not touch the contacts in the socket or the contacts
on the bottom of the processor, as that would contaminate the
contacts.

Add components, like the RAM, (you have built-in video, so
you cannot really separate the RAM and video tests), finally
adding drives, keyboard etc. Monitor the results of the
startup after adding these components, to see whether you
get the appropriate response. Adding components one at
a time and testing, can tell you a fair bit about what
is stopping the POST.

Paul
 
Ian R said:
Hi

I'm helping a friend get his PC working.

His PC is has an ASUS P5RD1-V Deluxe which has an on board ATI Radeon
X300GPU.

The PC powers up but there is no display at all.

Ive tried taking out the RAM chips and reseating them - just trying one on
its own but still no display.

The board also has SVHS/component/composite outputs and I got nothing out of
these either.

I then fitted a PCI graphics card and got no display on that either.

I took out the hard drive to recover files from it and found that some files
had been written to the last date/time I powered up his PC. So something in
there must be working OK.

I just wondered if the CPU has failed in some way would it still power up?
and exhibit this fault?

I dont have another LGA775 board handy to try out the CPU.

I suspect its most likely a problem with the system board.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this.

Thanks for your time.

Ian
Click to expand...

First if the mainboard has a bios switches for video make sure they are set
properly. I would reset cmos to bootable defaults.
 
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