Gah! - PC turns on, but no monitor signal!

[Theo]

My main pc was working completely fine the other day - I was happily playing counterstrike, working on coursework, and all that. No problem, man! (to quote John Candy in Cool Runnings).

However, I turned it off yesterday in order to reinstall a (Sony) CDRW that I'd been using to reinstall an OS on my webserver. As I turned it off, I realised that I'd clicked restart instead of Shut down. So (stupidly!), I turned off the machine straight after it rebooted.

I unplugged the psu cable, plugged the ide/power cables in and screwed the cdrw in securely - everything in as you normally do when installing a CDRW. When I was ready to turn the pc back on, I replugged the psu cables in, turned it on at the back, and switched the pc on.

The computer turns on fine - fans are moving, hdd is being accessed, motherboard lights are on, as are keyboard and mouse optical lights. However, the monitor stays on standby - ie, recieving no signal.

So, I turned the pc off (again :/), and unplugged the cdrw (which was working perfectly with the server), just to check whether it was what was causing the problem. It wasn't.

I've reset the cmos, re-seated the graphics card, re-plugged the ide cables, ram, cmos jumper, vga cable, mouse cable, keyboard cable. I've even unplugged the kvm switch, and tried booting without it (so that the monitor/keyboard/mouse are plugged directly into the machine). I've tried the other vga out plug on the back of the graphics card (using a dvi to vga converter).

No cigar, though.

Helllllppp... the missus keeps bugging me, cause she wants to play Age of Empires!

My setup is:

NF7-S
XP1700 (not overclocked)
Thermaltake 420W
ATi Radeon 9600
Corsair TwinX XMS 3200 512MB
Sony CDRW
Pioneer Slot DVD
Maxtor DMax9 120GB

[BUFF]

When you reset cmos did you remove the power cable?
have you tried booting whilst holding the Insert key down?

Don't suppose that you have a spare gfx card to hand?

[bigZ]

try taking the memory out, and then booting, you should get a beep code from the bios, a long beep IIRC, then replace it, same with the graphics card, but you get a code like "beee beeep beeep beee beeep beeep"... remove anything you don't need to POST from your system, leave just the bare essentials: CPU (obv), Memory, Video Card, Keyboard. If you post with this, put things back in one at a time and test which component is causing the problems.

If the problem still persists, try a single memory module, try a different graphics card, try a different CPU, as it could be any one of those that is causing your problems.

[Theo]

Thanks for the replies, chaps... but the bleeding thing decided to work all of a sudden. I just installed a little pc speaker to see if there were any error beeps - and whilst I had my head under the desk, I hear monitor activity when I turn the thing on.

Very strange.. I have no idea what was wrong.. as it was doing the same when I left it yesterday. Completely baffled.

Perhaps the Computer fairies came during the night, or something...

[Swafe]

or maybe your gfx is going down

it makes sence overheating.......boom, no display

waits...gfx cools

works !


maybe the fans blown or something?

[Theo]

Nah, it's fine.. fan is working well, and I'd tried to boot up from cold boot (eg giving it a night or two of off time), and it still didn't work.

Decent airflow in my case anyway, so I doubt that'd be the problem. Unless I'm mistaken, anyway :/