R9 290 not detected at POST after working flawlessly

[naildrone]

Ladies & gentle boys
Apologies before hand for what could potentially result in a long-ish question

I seem to have run into a bit of a issue.
Played game last night, VGA not detected this morning (one long beep, three short ones). Curiously, there is another short beep a little while later (which according to the manual, signifies either (1) VGA detected [which I doubt as the PCI-e error LED is on], (2) Quick boot is set to disabled [which it is, and if remember correctly, I use to always have a one short beep - one never gives enough attention when things are working] or (3) Keyboard not detected)

Weird thing is, the GPU blower fan either doesn't start at all, or goes balls to the wall with max RPM. I have switched PCI slots, no change, and I have popped a GTX460 into the board which worked fine. While the 460 was doing it's thing, I took the opportunity to remove all drivers with DDU (display driver uninstaller) which didn't improve anything on the r9 290 side of things. neither did taking out the CMOS battery for 10-15mins. There is also currently no overclock CPU side

I must add that a while back I had the dreaded black screen issues that alot of the R9 290* boys had, so I flashed new bios which I received from PowerColor and the problem has been sorted since. The GPU is underclocked a slight bit (for further mitigation of the black screen issues) & custom fan profiles, all via afterburner

The card's power LED's are on, so there is most defs power, card is also warm to the touch (presumably the no-fans things doesn't help an already dragon's breath warm card)

Among other things, I use the PC as a media server, and my HTPC connects to it fine, streaming shows to kodi etc etc and I can RDP into the PC without a hitch.

Honestly, the ONLY thing that has changed in the last week was that I have added two more HDD's, which has been performing fine

Specs:
Mobo: Asus P7P55D-e
CPU : i5 750 (not having onboard video is a bit@h)
PSU : Antec 900w 80+
GPU : R9 290
Mem: 8GB XMS3 1333

Any further ideas and/or recommendations would be much appreciated

 

[aviconus]

Kinda sounds like a bum 290. The fact that you put your back up card in, and everything works is pretty good indication too. Did the PCI-e error light remain on with the new card? I likely would have returned/RMA'd it when it had the initial black out issue, and you might still be able to.

 

[naildrone]

Nope, with the 460 the PCI POST Error LED is off. With the 290, it's on, along with the beeps. I think one last desperate option would be to stick the 290 into my HTPC and check whether I get the same POST code. Actually just thinking out loud, I'll have a go at it once I'm home, but would it be possible to boot into windows via the 460 in one PCI slot, while having the 290 connected to the other, so I can see what device manager sais and potentially flash the 290 again. Can't remember whether ATIWinFlash allows you to specify which card. Would be quit the conundrum if I flash the 460 haha.

It's was a second hand card (very close to new I should add), so I think that RMA is out by now. Nearly 50% of the folks (especially the boys with Elpida memory, I have Hynix - not that it saved me at all) had black screen issues, so chances of receiving another black screen card was rather high. This is bullsh*t
Final step would be the oven

 

[aviconus]

You can try booting with the 460 hooked up and to the monitor, but I don't imagine that it would be seen in device manager if it posted.

 

[naildrone]

aviconus, even though it is just you and me, issue has been solved

(1) the 460 worked in both my HTPC & my gaming rig
(2) the 290 stopped working on my gaming rig, but works on the HTPC

Restored windows back a week and all is sorted. Still unsure what happened, all I know of really is my girlfriend trying to copy shows onto a memory stick I had a linux distro on. So not sure whether she accidentally booted into it, saw this isn't what things normally looked like and aborted grub, leaving me with this sh*t storm. But she will be thoroughly punished none the less

Have a cool night

 

[aviconus]

Glad it turned out to be something easy! My wife used to mess up my computer all the time downloading stuff. My solution was to build her her own pc, which she knows if she messes it up, then that's it, therefor she takes a lot better care of it. Again, glad you worked it out.