Monitor does not work???

[paulm34]

A friend of mine asked me to have a look at his PC as it keeps restarting itself when it boots into windows. As soon as i discovered it was doing this i decieded to reinstall windows XP (as this usally sorts most problems) .I went into the bios to change the first boot setting to cd and saved and exit rebooted pc and now there is nothing on the monitor it powers on so does the pc. But all i get is lines which make up squares:rolleyes: I have tried different monitors but still nothing its like there is no output from the onboard graphics card. I have checked all connections eg ram/ ide cables but it all seems fine:rolleyes: . I tryed a hard reset with the motherboard battery but still the same. Am i right in thinking that is it might be a fault on the on board graphics/ram as the computer is second hand PCand is not worth reparing if this is the case:confused: any advise would be great:D

[mirage]

Tricky one, check the monitor plug make sure no pins have been bent.

When you did a hard reset of the bios was the main power lead disconnected?
On some boards you take the link out and some you short between 3 pins was there 2 or 3 pins to reset the bios?
Also check the main 20 pin connecter from the power supply to the motherboard
Give it a push in..
You might have unknowingly disabled the onboard graphics card, can you try a pci/agp Card see if that works…

[jockwav]

Sounds like either the graphics cable or the onboard itself.

[paulm34]

thanks for replys. have checked pins and plugs all seem ok i have not tryed another pci graphics card as i do not have a spare one. And if i bought one to try it would cost more than the pc is worth (second hand celeron)

[Jon]

Initial thoughts the RAM, had exactly the same thing knocking up an E6600 3 months ago and some ram from PCWorld for the MSI mobo below. Got a refund on the new ram went elsewhere installed the two 1Gb sticks, bingo. I did get the bios screens though.
Assume its running analogue output in which case ignore this. DVI output on FX5600 the monitor kept timing out on boot up as the registry was altered by something else and put it down the list.
Should only be about a fiver for a used pci graphics card.

Shame got AGP 4x and 8x FX5600 doing nothing as well as an MSI AMD mobo with ram and psu, just need a CPU up to 3000 with decent airflow.

Computer fairs are a good source of second hand/used items. http://www.computermarkets.co.uk/ Know your prices if buying new stuff, many a time they are dearer than mail order.