No monitor activity

[Frank M]

I have recently built a new PC, all brand new components. I have tested my new RAM, HDD, graphix card, and power supply in an already working system, and they all work. However when i power on my new system, my monitor stays blank, and its activity light remains orange like in stand by. the MOBO lights up and all my fans work.

I have stripped it down to the barebones. I only have 1 stick of ram plugged in. i disconnected my HDD, and unplugged my video card. the monitor is attatched to the onboard video.

I am using:
Corsair XMS2 800 MHZ 2048 MB ram
AMD Athalon 64 X2 dualcore processor
ASUS M3A-H/HDMI Mobo
950 W 12V powersupply

I cant seem to figure out what is wrong. my aassumption would be the CPU or MOBO?

[davy]

Hi Frank M welcome to HTFC.

Is video card is suitable for the mobo and is the monitor is OK?

First of all, are you getting the single bleep after pressing the power button, this is known as bios boot properly known as POST (Power On Self Test), basically, you press the power button you are kicking the bios out of bed, it does a Power On Self test and if all is well it'll give a bleep, at this point it hands control over to the CPU and then the hard drive starts loading data in to RAM... so the first goal is getting the bios to boot without getting past this POST nothing will happen - another indication of booting up would be the welcome sound.

Now then with the bare bones system, that is just the RAM and graphic card... (yes, yes we need the mobo, power supply and CPU as well - couldn't resist ) everything else can be disconnected including the hard drive you should be able to boot the bios getting that single bleep and be able to access the bios set up screen if so wished.... supposing all was well here you would get an error message 'No Hard drive found', 'Operating system failure', a request to insert the disc with the operating on or 'Hard drive failure' simply because it's not connected, the machine wouldn't just sit there looking dumb it would let you know.

So really we need to know are you able to get POST, with no monitor it's harder to tell but there should be clues we can pick up.

Might be an idea to mention the operating system that your using but it's not important at this stage.

Davy

[asoileau83]

Are you using the DVI or VGA (D-Sub) port from your motherboard? Does your monitor have a source/input button to change the video input between the 2?

I've had that problem on my cousin's computer, but that ended up being the video card. Sometimes I'd power the system on and the monitor wouldn't get a signal from the video card. I'd do numerous things to get it to work and eventually it would work; however, it would happen again the next time I shutdown the computer and turn it back on (shutdown, not reboot). I actually went as far as to swap cards with a friend of mine who had an almost identical nVIDIA 6200 for a week, and it worked fine!

THAT little PC problem was my WORST Nightmare, by far!! I tested parts for months! I didn't have a spare PCI-E vid card of my own because I was still running an AGP card in my system and I wasn't ready to upgrade yet. Eventually (4 months later!!) the vid card burned up and stopped working completely. I RMA'd the card back to XFX and now it works like a dream!

Anywho ...

For your case, I'd say test the monitor first. Test it on a friend's system. (Check for an input/source button too)

Make sure your video card is getting power in YOUR system (fans turning on). As a matter of fact, call the power supply, mobo, or grafx card manufacturer and make sure all the parts are compatible with each other.

I had a quirky problem a few years back with a modular Antec HE500 power supply and my motherboard. Pretty consistent reboots. No blue screen. No pattern in what I was doing at the time it would reboot. Just black screen and then it'd boot back up. I swapped to a different power supply and it was steady from then on.

Try VGA and DVI ports. The BIOS might be set to VGA and you're using DVI. You'll have to hook it up to VGA, boot into the BIOS and change it to DVI, then reboot using DVI.

Hope that helps...