Monitor Screen stays black

[ecobill]

hello, this is ecobill. i am new in the neighborhood. I know a little about computers (enough to be dangerous); so, I need help once in while. Whenever I have trouble it is never the normal problems.
Because I lost the printer drivers and USB drivers on my present computer when I updated to XP Service pack 2 and I have been able to install them from any locaton.

I have received a used, but more updated computer. I was told it worked, but there was no rack for the hard drives that matched the screw holes. I adapted an old rack and when I turn on the power with the monitor attached, there is nothing but a black screen. The power supply appears Ok, because some of the lights come on; the hard drive is running; and the fans come on the motherboard and video card. The monitor is OK because I used it on another older computer. Also when I just unplug the monitor from the video card, the screen comes on. I tried another older video card in one of the shorter card slots, but it did work either.
Any ideas out there? Thanks

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

You might not be getting any video on the card you know to be working if it's using a different bus because the BIOS is set to enable the other one and it didn't switch automatically or you didn't take the one that is suspected to be broken out of the system.

Put the video card that is known to be working into the PC, take the other one out and reset your CMOS. Try booting after that and get back to us.

 

[ecobill]

Monitor stays black

I don't know how to reset the cmos unless you mean to pull the battery. I don't know about the BIOS bus for the video (I can't see any BIOS) settings. I removed the original AGP video card that I thought might be a problem and I put an older working video card (Trident) in another PCI slot and this made no difference. I pulled the RAM chips to clean the connections and reset all cables. I disconnected the CD drive, the floppy drive, and later the hard drive after checking each situation indiviudally, but this made no difference.

Another problem (may be related) is the on-off switch does not control anything. I have to use the toggle switch in the back. I checked the wire connection from the switch to the motherboard (Intel D845BG) and it looked OK.
Thanks