Question External graphic card not booting up (or weird behavior at boot-up)

[jordyun]

Hi,

This is an old (10+ year) DELL desktop with a nVIDIA 750TI I upgraded a few years ago. It has been working fine albeit slow. Last night it was running slow and I decided to reboot, and it never was able to boot up. I tried going into BIOS, but somehow the keyboard didn't work in BIOS. I decided to clear the BIOS by changing the jumper, but the keyboard still didn't work inside BIOS (F2 did work to get into BIOS). After some googling, I removed the 750TI and successfully booted from the integrated graphics card. However, once I put the 750TI back in, I'm hearing weird beeps during boot up (it beeps a short/normal one first, followed by a long beep, and then after a while it beeps a short/normal one again), and it'll show up on the monitors only after it gets into Windows (so I cannot get into BIOS normally). I guessed that it's because in BIOS, the "initial display first" option is set to "onboard". The only way to get back to BIOS is to plug one of the screen back to the integrated graphics card, and it'll show something like I should plug the monitor cable to the add-in card. And I was able to F2 to BIOS then. But if I change the "initial display first" to PCIE 16x, and move the monitor back to the 750TI, it'll hang on the DELL Inspiron screen.

While I can do normal operation in Windows now if I boot up from onboard, I don't think this is normal and I'd like to at least able to get to BIOS normally. How could I fix this?

Thanks for your help in advance.
jordyun

 

[jordyun]

I recorded the beep code in the video below. Honestly, I'm having trouble correlating the beep to the beep code. The beep code doesn't distinguish long/short beeps, and my beep is one "normal" one (which I usually hear when it boots normally) followed by a long continuous beep. Here's the recording:

View: https://youtu.be/oLSwHEUUS0w

And the Inspiron 546 beep code is here:
https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/...on_desktop/inspiron-546_setup guide_en-us.pdf
As you may be able to see from the video, this recording is made when I only connect my monitor to the 750TI through HDMI. ( I can make other recordings with beep codes later if needed)
Is it possible the beep is not from BIOS?

 

[jordyun]

I made another recording, this time setting "initial display first" to "onboard".

View: https://youtu.be/wen3F4w-9V4



It has similar beeps in the beginning, but then after a while it beeps again (did it reboot?) and later Windows screen pops up. There was never the Dell Inspiron boot up screen though (it may have been sent through the onboard/integrated card which is not connected to a monitor).


I'm probably gonna temporarily keep this setup, but would still like to know what's causing that long beep and how to fix that.