Video Card Diagnosis Assuming the system power comes up with yor monitor. Most monitors have a status LED on the front-down-right side that should show green, orange, or blinking if the monitor is powered on. You can also hear most monitors power on with a gentle sound, though I can't be describe it beyond saying it's the sound of a CRT tube warming up. Make sure your monitoris plugged into a good outlet by testing the outlet with a lamp or any other device that will prove beyond a doubt that the outlet is good. Make sure that the power cord is eitherpermanently attached at the monitor end or that it is seated fully in the socket, since partial cord insertion is the most common failure for monitors with detachable cords.Most new monitors will display something such as "No signal", or"Attach video signal," aslong as they are healthy, and powered on. These messages should appear even if the PC or video adapter is dead. This is actually one of the more useful innovations in monitor technology, because it offers definitive proof that the computer monitor or LCD display is alive and most likely capable of displaying animage if a video signal was present. Unfortunately, it only proves something by itspresence, since older monitors and cheaper models may not displayanything at all.
Make sure the 15 pins video signal cable is seated squarely on the video port on the back of the video card. The hold-down screws on either side of the connector should be screwed in all the way, but dont made it up tootight. If the video cable is connected correctly, remove it and inspect the connector for damage.
Look carefully at the pins in the connector to make sure none of them are at an angle or flattened against the bottom. Note that missing pins in a video cable are the norm, usually the monitor ID pins. It's great if you have a spare video cableand a monitor with a detachable cable, but most monitors have an integrated cable (don't detach) and most people don't have a spare anyway. You will usually have to settle for visual inspection for whether the cable may have been damaged.
If you see that a pin in the connector is bent, you can try to straighten it very slowly with tweezers or fine needle nose pliers. If a pin breaks, you can buy a replacement connector and solder it on with a fine soldering iron and infinite patience. You'll also need a heat shrink gun and tubing if you want to do it right.
Video Connector Pin out
* 1-Red
* 2-Green
* 3-Blue
* 4-Monitor ID (Note: pins for ID bits often not present)
* 5-Ground
* 6-Red Return (coax shield)
* 7-Green Return (coax shield)
* 8-Blue Return (coax shield)
* 9 No-Connection
* 10-Sync Ground
* 11-Monitor ID
* 12-Monitor ID
* 13-Horizontal-Sync
* 14-Vertical-Sync
* 15-Monitor ID
If resetting the card doesn't clear up the beeps, it's either video adapter failure or RAM on the motherboard. You can power down and try resetting the RAM at this point, without going all the way through the motherboard diagnostics. There used to be beep codes for all sorts of component failures, but most of those components have long since been integrated into the motherboard and can't be replaced if they fail.
Do you get a live screen,or at least move past the BIOS screen, with allthe other adapters removed or replaced? If so, the problem is eithera bad adapter preventing proper operation of the bus or an adapter conflicting with the video card. In either case, you can reinstall the adapters one at a time, poweringup after each one, troubleshooting the problem by process of elimination. Don't forget to unplug the system each time before taking any action inside the case.
If the motherboard is a new upgrade, try the video adapter in another system before trashing it, since it couldbe a simple incompatibility. If installing a new video adapter doesn't solve your "dead screen" problem, it's probably a motherboard related problem, even though you got to this point without any beep codes. Proceed to Motherboard, CPU and RAM Failure.
