No video output with new barebones and radeon 7500 AGP 6

[evolutionary]

Hello, I just put together a new barebones system, and to my surprise, I am not getting any video output from the Radeon 7500 AGP card. I have tested 2 monitors with it, and each of them work on other computers. Unfortunately, the other 2 computers I have here both lack AGP slots, so I can't test the card out on them. Some of my barebone info is below:

pentium 2.4 on a P4VXASD2 P4 motherboard
512 mb ram (pc133)
4gb maxtor hd set as master
40gb wd hd
hercules game theater sound card

Also, can I use a pc100 128mb stick in with the pc133 stick?

I have tried booting it with just the 512mb memory, floppy drive, and video card, but the monitor power indicator light remains yellow (meaning no input) on both monitors I have tried. I also have tried plugging in a PCI video card that is known to work, and I couldnt get any video output out of that either, so Im leaning towards a motherboard issue here....

If anyone can help me, I would appreciate it very much!

Thanks!

 

[cheetah1]

Does your mobo have built in video card? Try connecting your monitor to it first.
Are you sure there's power to the card (ie: does the vid card's fan come on?). How about the mobo's fans? I'd double check all your p/s connections, and all your ribbon cables.
Does the PC otherwise boot ok (ie: h/d sound and optical drive lights come on?). If you've tried another card and it still fails, may be either a p/s issue or your mobo, as you indicated.
Reset the card just to make sure, then restart PC.
You'll have to test the vid card on a buddie's system if you've done the above and no improvement is noticed, just to be sure it's not that.

Good luck

 

[evildoughboi]

Well i had the same problem twice. One solution was to switch around the power supply cables (dont ask me why that worked, but it did). the other was just to put in the video card only and try to see if the other cards are faulty, which u already did. mayb try to tinker w/ the power cables connecting the drives to the power supply. good luck!

 

[paparazi]

Advice in this situation is always the same, once all avenues have been exhausted it's down to bare bones or even "bread boarding" actual removal of the motherboard placed on a raised surface (motherboard box) and just fit processor, heatsink/fan, memory, and graphics, plug in you power supply, reset the cmos clear, carefully bridge the switch contacts with a momentary touch of a screwdriver blade,and it should boot.
If sucessful then you can slowly rebuild, replacing one item at a time until the offending part (if hardware) is found. Martin Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[evolutionary]

No, unfortunately, the mobo doesnt have a built-in video output. Let me try a few more things you suggested and get back with you.

Im currently using the pci video card that didnt work in the barebones, in my old computer.

 

[mudskipper]

evolutionary - paparazi is right. At some point, it would be easier to breadboard the system, clear CMOS, etc. Additionally, you might check out faq602-2731 Mudskipper
___________________________________________________________________________________

Groucho said it best- "A four year-old child could understand this! Quick! Run out and find me a four year-old child: I can't make heads nor tails out of this!"

 

[rew]

could be a power supply fault! mine did the same thing when i installed a new mobo! the fans switched on and powered the board but no video came up! worth a look

 

[rew]

you can use a pc 100 with a pc 133 as the latter will drop down to 100megs but what is the point of having sdram on a p4 board! it defeats the object as was noted by someone else on the xp forum! make sure the ram is seated home fully

 

[evolutionary]

I tried a new agp video card, and the fan went on (on the video card), so Im assuming its getting power. I tried clearing the cmos and just having the memory and video card connected and in there, but to no avail.

Of course the tech support from the company I purchased the unit from are terrible and rude, which only makes things better.

 

[evolutionary]

Thanks for all the messages so far! I ended up trying all of what you said, but I ended up taking it in to a local computer shop and the following is the update:

I turned out to have a capacitor on the board out, which was not allowing the SDRAM slots to work, so I upgraded to DDR, but unfortunately, the computer is still very unstable.

Now, the damn thing is freezing during the boot process, and when manage to get through, I try to reinstall Win 2k, but every time it tries to reboot the computer during the setup process, it freezes again or gives me the "NTLDR missing. Please reboot." error message. I am not installing over win 95/98, its a brand new 20gb HD that I just formatted and repartitioned (NTFS file system).

Now, just to top things off, I came home today and thought Id get the problem fixed, but Im not getting any video again. The setup didnt change, and now I'm getting 10 or so beeps on turning the computer on. The BIOS is AMI, so Im guessing the mobo is screwed?? The mobo is a P4VXASD2.

Anyone have any ideas? I've already spent almost as much as I did for the system in just figuring out what's wrong with it.

Thanks,
Ben

 

[sands11]

I am having the exact same issue that you are having with the "NTLDR is missing, press any key to restart" message.

Here's what I would do ... Assign the 20 GB hard-drive as master and the old one as slave. Reboot with windows 2K cd and go through the installation process again. This will re-format and install Windows 2K on your new HD. The problem with this is that the softwares linked to the OS on the previous HD will be useless.

However, after doing this, I still get the error message everytime I reboot the system, but instead of going through a never-ending cycle, the OS loads after I press any key. Sometimes PC's do the weirdest things ... !!!

You might also want to check out

http://www.microsoft.com

and type in 'NTLDR is missing, please restart' under search to see the explanation/solution they give. I am still in the process of understanding their technical jargon. But in the meantime, my PC works just fine except for the silly harmless error message up front.

Let me ask you this...I replaced my SDRAM with DDR last night, but there was no picture on the monitor. The system works fine with the SDRAM. Could it be jumper settings that I need to play with? Any ideas? Thanks.
-S

 

[evolutionary]

thanks.