PC failed to boot with a dark screen resulted
 

Hi folks,

AMD Athlon64 3000
Asus A8N-VM motherboard with on board vedio card
Gigabyte NX66 256 DDR2 vedio card
FC6


The PC failed to start. The CPU fan was turning and so was the HD. The HD LED light continued to glow. I heard the beep sound but nothing displayed on the LCD monitor screen.

This box has another HD running WinXP. I tried it with the same result.

This problem happened recently. Previously I got the screen back by turning off/on the LCD monitor. But this time it did not work.

Please advise where shall I start to check. TIA


B.R.
satimis

I think the video card would be the prime suspect. I seem to understand that you have both a pci or agp video card an onboard video? Have you tried disabling/removing the plug-in card and using the onboard graphics instead?

I'm pretty sure BIOS gives a particular beep code if it detects a faulty video device. It still doesn't hurt to try jay73's suggestion. While you're in there, I would also check the hard drive cables. The fact that the disk spins means it has power, but the interface cable could've come loose. If the problem persists it could be the monitor. How old is it? LCDs only last an average of 5 years.

Hi jay73 and dracolich,


Tks for your advice.

jay73 is right. It is the problem of the PCI-E vedio card. Remove the said card and plugin the LCD monitor on the onboard vga card. Now the screen comes back again.

However another problem turns out. The mouse pointer disappears. Before login it was there. It seems to me that the mouse is working under the screen. On moving the mouse it seems touching something. It is a PS2/USB mouse. I tried both PS2 and USB ports with the same result. Any advice? TIA


After cleaning the PCI-E vedio card I'll replug it on the slot to see what will happen.


Edit:
Replug the PCI-E vedio card after cleaning it. However it doesn't work anymore. I'll test the vedio card on another PC to see whether the problem coming from the slot.

Now my immdiate need is to remove the nVidia driver and reset the nv generic driver. I forgot the command to do it. "xorgconf"??? Any advice. TIA


B.R.
satimis

Prolly already done but.
 

Did you disable the onboard video in the bios and set the mb to boot to the PCI-E slot on the mb first and check the settings for the PCI-E slot in the bios. The reason i ask is because my asus mb's set the bios to an incompatible video setting by default. When this happens the video card works until it goes into graphics mode. Just though I would add because I had a similar problem with my asus A8V-E SE and XFX Geforece 6800GS PCI-E.

Edit: I also had to replug in the monitor because the video cards default refresh rate was out of range for my monitor.

I assume the mouse problem is directly related to your current xorg.conf being configured for your pci card instead of the onboard card. X may simply be a bit confused right now.

As for the xorgconf, that appears to be dying a slow death nowadays. I was recently rummaging through one of systems hoping to find it but I just couldn't; then I read it is being dropped on a large scale. The most recent Mandriva and Suse still appear to have it but it's disappeared from Fedora and Ubuntu; Gentoo 2006 still used it but I haven't checked 2007 yet. I don't know which one(s) you use so you may have to do a bit of research.

Hi jay73,


Tks for your advice.


What I'm looking for is the command to run "xorg config" interactively, not manually editting /etc/X11/xorg.conf


Here is /etc/X11/xorg.conf on FC6 box "nv" driver already selected. No entry for mouse.

Can you or any folk give me a working example of xorg.conf of FC6. TIA.


I don't know where is the original xorg.conf for PCI-E vedio card gone.


B.R.
satimis

Here is mine; this is configured for an ATI card so you will have to make some adjustments to the parts that have a direct bearing on the video card: section "ServerFlags" (nvidea does support AIGLX), section "device" and section "Extensions"(I guess this is not needed for nvidia cards).

Hi Hern_28,

Tks for your advice.

It is not necessary. Nor I did anything on the BIOS in this respect.

I contacted ASUS technical support about a year ago. The folk answering my call informed me that it was auto-selected. Wheneven I plugin a PCI-E vedio card it'll be selected automatically, disabling the onboard vga card simultaneously.


Previously the PCI-E vedio card worked w/o problem until recently. Neither I did anything on the BIOS. The card has been working for more than a year.


I'll test the problem PCI-E vedio card on another PC later.

B.R.
satimis

Solved
 

Hi jay73,


Tks for your advice and xorg.conf file.


I solved my problem as follows;

1)
Installed nVidia driver. The nv generic drive can't satisfy the onboard vga card.

2)
About the loss of mouse pointer, I deleted "rhgb" on the kernel line of /boot/grub/grub.conf. Then it fixed my problem. I have no idea why "rbgb" making the mouse pointer disappeared. Previously it worked w/o problem on the PCI-E vedio card.


Edit:
/etc/X11/xorg.confB.R.
satimis