video problem

[Jacal]

Ok someone gave me their computer to look at cause they thought i knew alot well the problem he was having was that a friend of his put in a pci ethernet adapter and when he plugged in his dsl he wasn't getting an internet connect. When i looked on it i saw that it was receiving limited or connectivity so i just told him to ask his friend for the driver cd for the pci card cause he told me all hi s friend did was to put in the card.
Before i gave it back to him i showed him the message. Then he took home the computer. Today he brought it back telling me that when he turns it on the monitor doesn't turn on, he doesnt have an internal speaker so i cannot tell if the system is going through post or not, most i can say is that i see the busy indicator led blinking. Could you tell me of ways to solve the problem. Thank you. I am currently trying to reset the bios completely by leaving out the battery for awhile.

 

[raybay]

You might be in deep doodoo of helping a rank amateur when you are perhaps not ready.
He may have fouled up the video graphics driver, or downloaded the wrong driver.
Put the monitor on your computer to make sure it works, then do the downloads and installs of the BIOS and drivers yourself.... if you are experienced in doing them.

 

[Jacal]

i believe that when he was driving with it home he might have shaked it up a bit so i going to pull the board off the case and see what happens. Then i going to call him and asked if he tried to load anything on when he reached home with it.

The monitor is fine. lol and yea i not really ready i am a person who would experiment with my own computer alot and always ask for advice, so whatever i learn i memorize it and if now of what i have learned so far works i ask for help. Call it a good habit endless cycle.

 

[herr5407]

Here's some advice (I have too mangled computers trying to fix them )

When you first saw there was limited or no connectivity, this is usually due to a network problem of some sort. The network card itself was not manfunctioning as it has to detect the physical connection. By displaying limited/no connectivity, it shows that it has indeed detected the physical connection but was unable to use the network connection (due to unable to contact a DHCP server, etc).

First just try to reseat everything if the computer got banged around a little.

If that doesn't work, then try to remove his video card and install another one (if you can) or remove it and use the onboard (if available) to rule out the video card.

If he loaded additional drivers or installed something, if you can achieve a video output of some sort you could try booting into safe mode and rolling back the device's drivers that he installed. Another option is to use the last known good configuration option from the advanced startup menu.

I would stay away from trying to do the BIOS upgrade. Try to fix the simple things first and then move onto the more troublesome tasks as a botched BIOS upgrade can really pooch the computer bad.

 

[Jacal]

that would have worked if the person had a video card to begin with >.<
i just finished pulling the board down and while pulling it down i noticed he did not have on any speaker to hear the post sounds.
What i am hearing after putting one on is a steady long beep repeating itself without end.
All i can say in regards to being bumped up a bit is that when he was driving with it home it might have come under some vibration but he insists it did not. So i just going to reset the bios.

 

[raybay]

I'll give you odds that your friend messed with it in ways you haven't been told.
The beep code interpretation is nearly always available on the website of themotherboard manufacturer or the computer manufacturer

 

[Jacal]

he tells me all he did was to connect it up and try turn it on, but i don't see how yesterday it was working completely fine and all of a sudden the monitor is gone. It is on a VIA chip set but i don't see the post codes for that chip set, if anybody can give me a website to those it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[herr5407]

Could you possibly obtain mobo model?

If everything is onboard, try updating the chipset drivers.

 

[Jacal]

not the monitor the motherboards on board video sorry. I have on my monitor and i just not getting anything, I even went to the length of using a different case power sw to start the machine along with a new power supply and i am getting the same problems. So I can pretty much rule out the power supply and the power cables from the case as the problem.

How am I going to update the bios if i cannot even get the system to turn on? The most i could find on the board is "V2MDMP".

 

[herr5407]

Came up with this in my search.

http://www.machspeed.com/manuals/VENOM/V2MDMP.pdf

Check out page 18.

You have already reset CMOS by pulling the battery correct?

Check to make sure the RAM is seated properly.

 

[Jacal]

yep the Ram is seated down properly.

 

[Jacal]

yep i found that page but it doesnt let me go through all of it...i keep getting some error message.

 

[herr5407]

All is stated was this...


One short beep when displaying logo - No error during POST
Long beeps in an endless loop - No DRAM install or detected
One long beep followed by three short beeps - Video card not found or video card memory bad
High frequency beeps when system is working - CPU overheated, System running at a lower frequency

I have to run out for a bit. I will ask a few people what they would do to get some more opinions.

 

[Jacal]

alright i got to the page thank you. viewed it as html. Well umm nothing thing now that is completely ackward to me. The next thing is that the power isnt being controlled. As the power the supply is plugged in the fans on the board just start up.

 

[Jacal]

Alright thank you very much for the help thus far.

 

[Ressurrector]

And this is a VIDEO problem? Sorry all I heard was ethernet and connection trouble....

 

[herr5407]

What I would do is...

- unplug power to any peripheral that isn't required. Tear it down to nothing just so its a basic system to try and isolate the problem.

I find it hard to believe that nothing happened to it. Unless it just happened to be a weird coincidence that a componenent just happened to fail when he was hooking it up.

I dealt with a problem like this last week and the client said he did nothing. Yet I found a snapped piece of the connector inside the speaker port which then shorted the entire system. He made it worse by trying to pry it out with the computer on with pliers.