Monitor is not getting a signal from video card

[msoneji]

i'm new to this forum and was wondering if i could get some help. i just put together a new computer and am not getting a signal to my monitor. the monitor just says "power save" when i turn on the computer and monitor.

computer specs:
motherboard: asus a7v600 with apg 8x slot and no video card built in
processor: amd athlon xp 3200 (400 fsb)
ram: kingston pc3200 512 mb
power supply: sparkle 300 watt
video card: geforce fx 5500 oc with 256 mb ram. the card is agp 8x/4x
hard drive: i have 2. one is an ide maxtor 6.4 gb, the other is a scsi seagate 9.2 gb. i have only plugged in the maxtor hd
operating system: on the maxtor hd, i am running windows 98 and on the scsi i am running windows xp. i would like to run off the scsi if i can but i will be more than happy to get this computer up and running with any os

what happens:
the cpu fan, case fan, and gpu fan all fire up. i hear no beeps or anything. i can't even get the bios messages on my monitor. at this point i would be really happy to get some kind of message on my monitor from the computer.

things i have tried:
i have just purchased the parts and have reseated everything. same thing happens
i tried an older pci card and i get no signal.
i have tried another monitor and still no signal
i have hooked up another computer to the monitor and that works so i don't think it's the monitor or the cable to the monitor
i put the pci card into the other computer and it works with my monitor so i'm sure that card is fine.
i just bought the geforce card yesterday (7/30/04) and so i'm pretty sure that card is good.

i haven't tried resetting the cmos but i will try that soon. if anyone can help, please let me know. i am getting very frustrated right now.

[filipino]

hmmmm how about try to disable the onboard videocard on bios setup?

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!

ok, I can think of 2 things it could be. (well, several actually)

1) its possible that the motherboard is touching the case somehow....this happens quite often and especially if it is your first time doing a build....it is easy to get the board in there crooked or something and it shorts out on the case somehow.

sometimes what it will do is make it where the power button on the comp has no control..in other words when you plug it in everything comes on even before you hit the power button.

to check this you have to..you guessed it, take the motherboard back out of the case and try to boot it....if it boots fine out of the case then it was just touching the case somehow and all you have to do is carefully put it back in and make sure it isnt shorted out..use the brass standoffs etc.

usually what you do is use the motherboard box and set it on that so that there is a little room for the vid card to hang down some....and the vid card will want to move some but it only has to be in there long enough to see if it kicks on the video.

since you have it out of the case you wont have the power switch hooked ot the motherboard so you either have to just use a flatblade screwdriver or a hard drive jumper to short the 2 power switch pins together to make it boot.


2) ok, before you try that you can try this....unplug everything that isnt vital and then try to boot...in other words unplug EVERYTHING EXCEPT...cpu/heatsink/fan...one stick of ram, vid card....that means unplug the ide cable, floppy cable, har ddrives, optical drives and the power plugs from the hard drives and cd drives etc....pull out any pci cards....

try to boot it like that...if it DOES boot like that, start plugging stuff back up one by one till it doesnt boot again and then youll find the culprit.


----

ok, the only other thing I notice is that you have a 300w psu..and its a "sparkle" at that...no offense meant, but sparkle is one of the cheapest quality brands out there...so it might just be that the psu is underpowered for the task....thats POSSIBLE....even though it seems it would have at least been strong enough to boot with the pci card.



overall my guess would be that the motherboard isnt in the case good.

JP

[Chuckiechan]

Have you tried resetting the CMOS and with the box unplugged for ten minutes?

My nForce chipset made me do that.

Welcome to techimo!

[msoneji]

ok...here's what i've done:
i've tried resetting the cmos and i still have the same problem.
i took the motherboard out and plugged in only the video card and ram and i still have the problem.
i called the company where i bought the motherboard and they seemed to think that maybe it was the ram. but the ram is kingston ram which the asus website says works with the motherboard. i even matched the model numbers to make sure. i'm going to try to get some ram from a friend and see if that solves my problem.
it could be the power supply but i'm not sure. the power supply is a sparkle power supply but it's labelled power man. although i know friends in the past who have used and still use sparkle without any problems. they have told me that when they didn't have an approved power supply they were able to still boot up but when they tried to install windows xp they had problems. i can't even boot up.
any more help would be greatly appreciated. also i appreciate all the help that i have gotten thus far.

[msoneji]

oh one more thing...i forgot to say that before resetting the cmos the computer was out of the case and when i plugged in the essentials and turned on the power supply the fans just kicked on right away without me shorting anything. after resetting the cmos, i had to short the power switch like you said john.

[Laws of Physics]

My system has the option to boot to xp or Vista..
I can boot and see the screen in XP but ever since I put a digital cable on, no signal once video boots in Vista. I think I'll go back to the SVGA cable..

BH