New build; no monitor signal

**Skiz** · 10-14-2011, 06:09 PM

Installed all the new hardware last night. Once everything was ready to go, I booted up the computer but I get nothing on the monitor. When I press the menu button on the monitor it states, "There is no signal coming from your computer." I can however hear Windows 7 boot up just fine. If I press the power button again, I can again hear Windows 7 powering down. Thus far, I have been able to repeat that as necessary.

My graphics card is an EVGA 8800 GTS. I have tried switching it to the other PCI-E slot and rebooting. No help there.
The GPU has power as the fan is spinning.
I have verified that the PCI-E power cable is firmly plugged in to the GPU.
I have verified that the GPU is firmly and fully positioned in the motherboard.
I have tried another monitor. (I usually run dual screens)
I have tried another PCI-E power cable to the GPU.
I have tried a different, older GPU (also PCI-E).
I have tried resetting the monitor settings.
I have even tried removing all but one stick of RAM and testing it in each RAM slot.

All of these lead to the same result: No signal to the monitor. After testing all of these I decided to take the computer into the living room and test the onboard HDMI. I plugged that into the HDTV and viola, I've got video out. So what does this likely mean? Bad motherboard slots? What's the next step? Is it possible that these GPU's are not compatible?

Again, the hardware I'm using is:

Motherboard - GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD3
CPU - Intel i5 2500K
PSU - Corsair HX 750W
RAM - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL

EDIT: I plugged my speaker in and I'm only getting the one, short beep when the system powers up, so as far as that goes, the PC is saying everything is powered up and OK.

**clocker** · 10-14-2011, 07:38 PM

Have you tried the vid card in a different machine?
Have you tried both DVI ports on the card?

Edit:
You might also try resetting CMOS on the MB...can't hurt, doubt it'll work though.

**Skiz** · 10-14-2011, 07:58 PM

Originally Posted by clocker

Have you tried the vid card in a different machine?
Have you tried both DVI ports on the card?

Edit:
You might also try resetting CMOS on the MB...can't hurt, doubt it'll work though.

I thought about that early on but I don't have another computer to test it on; he only other computers in the house are my laptop and my media center (no pci-e). I did however try an even older PCI-E card and got back the same result. I know that's a little different, but it gets me closer to feeling that the 8800 is OK.

I have tried both DVI ports as well as both monitors.

I thought about resetting the CMOS last night but since it's right out of the box, I don't know what there is to reset. I'll try it though.

I'm going to take it back into the living room and see if there isn't something in the BIOS that needs to be changed. Maybe I need to run the chipset disc?

EDIT: Got it! I bought my smaller HDTV from the bedroom into the office and started sorting through BIOS settings. The one that fixed it was the default setting to always use onboard VGA. I switched to something along the lines of 'only if no ext PEG' and that fixed it. Hooray!

Let's just hope that's the only hiccup.

**megabyteme** · 10-14-2011, 08:50 PM

I just read the product page, and it sounds like there could be something in the BIOS which would allow you to change between various video options (HDMI or PCIe or "other"- I could not find a BIOS page, but from the description, it sounds like the MB has a lot of built-in features).

Plug it back into the television, enter BIOS, and look for "video-somethingorothers".

Good luck, appears to be a nice board!

**Skiz** · 10-14-2011, 08:52 PM

Originally Posted by megabyteme

I just read the product page, and it sounds like there could be something in the BIOS which would allow you to change between various video options (HDMI or PCIe or "other"- I could not find a BIOS page, but from the description, it sounds like the MB has a lot of built-in features).

Plug it back into the television, enter BIOS, and look for "video-somethingorothers".

Good luck, appears to be a nice board!

Oops... just edited the previous post.

**sandman_1** · 10-14-2011, 09:09 PM

From advanced BIOS features:

HTML Code:

Onboard VGA
Enables or disables the onboard graphics function.
Auto
Always activates the onboard graphics, whether or not a PCI Express graphics card is installed.
	 If you wish to set up a dual-display configuration, set this item to Always Enable. (Default)

Enable If No Ext PEG
Activates the onboard graphics only when no PCI Express graphics card is installed.

Always Enable
Always activates the onboard graphics, whether or not a PCI Express graphics card is installed. If you 
wish to set up a dual-display configuration, set this item to Always Enable.

**Artemis** · 10-14-2011, 09:55 PM

Since you are going to be using dual 8800GTS cards in an SLi setup the 'Enable if no Ext PEG' option is the one you need since this disables the internal graphics card on the CPU always.

It seems slightly retarded to me that the factory default for the EFI BIOS in this case is 'Always Enable'. A large percentage of people are going to use an external graphics card (because Intel internal ones are still shite) and struggle with the same problem you had here.

**Skiz** · 10-14-2011, 10:42 PM

What I've been working on for the past almost 2 hours now is how to boot from a disc.

I've set it in BIOS and even done it through the boot selection screen. It's being either completely ignored or just won't work.

I set BIOS to boot from a disc. F10 to save and exit. Reboot. I get the message "to boot from a cd/dvd press any button..." but nothing I press will work. After rebooting and trying again, the settings are still correct in BIOS to boot from the disc first. I try disabling everything but the optical disc drive so it is the only boot device enabled. Same thing happens. After a few seconds, Windows still boots up even though there is no secondary device enabled.

If I try rebooting and using F12 to go straight to the boot options, Hard Disk is always selected (which is odd). If I select to boot 'cd/dvd disc', the same thing as above happens.

The drive has power and even works in Windows. I inserted the chipset disc and ran that to install all of the missing drivers, all with no problems at all.

I'm totally confused...