A Black Falcon Wrote:I already said. It doesn't even start, as far as I can tell. The computer powers on, but the monitor never enables when this problem hits, so I never even see the BIOS/motherboard boot screen, much less anything beyond that. The monitor just sits there blinking in "I'm not receiving any picture" mode, like when the computer is in sleep mode or something.You should try moving it to a empty expansion slot.. As I said before it could be a IRQ conflict causing post to fail, or simply one of your expansion slots could have gone bad, if you empty the slot, most motherboards will disable it during post and your computer should then be able to boot up. Also check to make sure the card is seated properly and the the screw that holds the card in place is tight.
If it gets far enough for the monitor to engage and go to a solid green light instead of blinking (or yellow, for the other monitor I've got here, same thing), it's going to be fine, usually.
There were some times a few weeks ago when, as I said, it'd reset when I plugged things into or out of the sound card, etc, so it's not 100% when it actually starts... but if it starts and I don't touch anything it seems to work.
But yeah, I really want to figure out why this is happening.
While my motherboard has some audio jacks so I assume it's got some kind of onboard audio, they don't work and never have, so even if I did want to give up on having high quality audio, EAX/ALchemy, sound that doesn't use CPU resources, and more -- and I definitely do not -- as far as I know those ports don't do anything anyway. I don't know if they'd suddenly start working if I removed the sound card, but as I don't want to do that, I don't really care to find out.
Sound cards may be slightly less important than graphics cards are, but both are still very useful, important things to have for PC gamers...
I got your joke, not bad... GR is just trying to be difficult and justify why he doesn't have a sound card, I think. :)
The only cards are the video card and the sound card. Considering that without having video plugged in I can't tell whether the computer is working or not (looking at the box it seems to be powered on either way, after all), unplugging that seems like it'd be thoroughly counter-productive... it's not like there's any other way of getting video output.
As for the sound card, I did try it without that a few weeks ago, and yes it did work that time while it'd been having a lot of problems otherwise, so I do wonder if it's bad. I'm not sure how to test it though, because of how sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. As I've been saying it makes me wonder if something's touching where it shouldn't be or something, if it's not just the sound card (why would touching the back reset the computer? That is not right!), but I don't know how to test for that myself.
Also, if you don't have on board video you can still use the Comptea process to trouble shoot post problems.. It just takes a little deductive reasoning..
Remove the ram all but one stick and keep the video card in the computer as well as disconnect all the drive. If the computer POSTS then you know the video card is fine as well as that stick of ram. If the computer doesn't POST it's either the video card or that ram stick.. So you need to swap out that RAM stick for another one (repeat with all sticks) If your computer fails to post after trying all the sticks chances are you have a bad video card. If the computer wont post with a particular stick of RAM installed but will with another stick, then that stick of RAM is the problem. Next one at a time reattach the drives. Repeat process. Finally install the sound card. This should help you track down the problem.
I suspect the problem is not the power supply because you mentioned that the CD drive is functional. Which means the that the power supply is being switch to a full voltage state by the mother board. Which if the power supply where bad it usually sends out irregular voltage during its standby state, in which case most motherboards will not bring the power supply to full power if that where the case.
Finally check your power supply connections. Particularly the one connection near your processor. Also, there also should be one or two more that power the motherboard and possibly the video card, (if it uses crossfire support)