No image on computer startup

jerichoshade

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Mar 18, 2014
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Hello!

I find myself in a bit of trouble and can't seem to find the solution. I'm using an old system in the sitting room, and it used to work fine - until the monitor became reluctant to start at the same time with the computer. My wife would fiddle with the cable in the back of the computer, and then restart the monitor and it would work again. She's no tech, that's pretty much what she did to make it work at the time. Now it's stopped working for good.

Now - the monitor works; I've tested it (and the VGA cable) with a laptop and another computer, and it works without a hitch. I figured it's the on-board graphics card at fault then, and bought a new internal graphics card, but even connected to that, the monitor tells me "No signal" and then promptly goes back to sleep. It's not a resolution or frequency setting, I reckon, because that wouldn't change by simply fiddling with the cables in the back. As such, I'm stumped as to what can cause this and what I can do to solve it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!
 
Thank you for your answer! Unfortunately, I'm not able to go into BIOS as there is no image whatsoever on the monitor when connected to the computer. The monitor acts as if it is not connected to anything at all - while all this time the computer is purring happily away like nothing is amiss.

Regarding the sidenote, I completely agree - but then again, it's just the sitting room computer, only used for casual net surfing and reading e-mails. It's the reason I never bothered getting a proper graphics card for it before, the on-board was more than sufficient for that.
 
What do you mean by "not a resolution problem"? My older monitor didn't turn on (automatically went to sleep just like yours) because the resolution was randomly set too high for the monitor (could only handle 720p). I solved it by connecting it to my full HD tv and change back the resolution to 720p. After that, everything worked fine =). Might be wrong, but you can always give it a shot!
 
Since you WERE using the onboard graphics before, when you added the graphics card and hooked the cable up to it, the computer is still trying to send the video out thru the onboard graphics. Unplug the cable from the video card, go into the BIOS find the option "Disable Onboard Graphics" or "Primary Graphics Adapted" and set it to PCI(e). then save and restart/shutdown (turn it off) plug the cable into the video card and it should work.
 
@BnG: It is not a resolution or frequency setting as that has not been changed - as I said, the problem started showing up a while ago, and my wife would "fix" it by randomly touching the cables in the back and turning the monitor on and off. If it were a settings issue, what she was doing would in no way solve the problem, even temporarily.

@papablista: the PC is an old one, I honestly can't remember the make and model for any of its components. If I recall, it's a 1gb RAM ASUS motherboard, 3.6(?) GHz single core. The new graphics card is an ASUS Radeon HD 5450.

@James Mason: I've only added the graphics card after the on-board failed to send any images to the monitor any longer. The issue is that the new card *also* doesn't send any video signal at all. As such, I have no way of seeing anything the computer would show - not Windows, not the Windows loading screen, not BIOS, not even the blinking cursor that would normally show at computer startup. There just doesn't seem to be any video signal at all going into the monitor.
 
Pop every thing out of it except the essentials , hdd memory use (1 stick) do you you have a onboard video,(use that) least is best try that, report back...try a different monitor.. we will try to help
 
You might have to get a new computer, since you don't sound afraid of touching computer parts, you can build one yourself:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Celeron G1820 2.7GHz Dual-Core Processor ($47.56 @ Mwave)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-E33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($44.99 @ Micro Center)
Memory: G.Skill Value 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($37.98 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.39 @ Amazon)
Case: Rosewill FBM-01 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Antec Basiq 350W ATX Power Supply ($24.00 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: LG GH24NSB0 DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($84.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $336.89
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-20 14:47 EDT-0400)
 
@papablista: The monitor itself works fine when connected to other devices - but just to be safe, I also connected the unit to my own monitor (the one I'm using just now) and still nothing. The computer itself is already made up of essentials only - HDD, 1 RAM card and the new video card, and that's it.

@KevinAr18: Thank you for your post! I've tried using the integrated graphics to get to work again, but it doesn't seem to work at all. However, when moving on to the next step and got the motherboard make and model - it's a Foxconn n15235 - I've noticed something else, which leads me to think it's not a graphics problem at all: there is no beep at startup.

Now, I do remember troubleshooting this unit a few years back based on the beep codes it gave when powering it on. To test this, I've removed the RAM card and turned it on again - still no beep. I've double-checked online and indeed, there should be a series of beeps when no RAM is detected. I do hope it's not the motherboard that's gone.

@James Mason: Thank you for the offer, but I wasn't really looking forward to spending cheese on this machine. The new graphics card itself may turn out to have been a bad idea.
 
@KevinAr18: Now I feel stupid for never having tried that. It's a bit too late in the evening at this point to give it another go, but it's definitely the first thing I'll try tomorrow when I get off work. The fans power up and keep on going, the hdd spins.

Indeed, this all started before getting the graphics card - I actually bought it thinking it's just a fault with the on-board. I used to run it skeleton-crew - just the hdd and one stick of RAM - when this all started. I'm going to try and see if I can narrow it a bit more tomorrow, as in I'll try to test the power supply to see if everything is working ok on that part.

Thanks for the answers and, for the time being, have a good night!