hermeslyre

A couple weeks ago one of the DVI ports died on my vid. card. Just shortly, the other one did (or so i thought, due to what subsequent, and the fact that the GPU fan spins up an everything). I found that while i could not see anything, the system boots into Windows fine, I can even go so far as to access all my files (of which I remember their specific paths) via run or the command line, blindly. None of my games work however, I can hear a windows error sound whenever i attempt to start any game exe's. So far, still relatively clear. I wanted to be absolutely bloody sure so i tried clearing the CMOS, cold booting with minimal spec/No RAM/etc, another PSU, Reseating everything including cables and shite, testing the monitor on another sys. (It's fine, guh), testing another monitor on problem sys., etc. Nothing came of it, only thing i can't do is find someone to borrow me use of a PCI-e card or slot. (don't have OB vid, btw)

The last thing i tried was removing the card and booting without it, to cement the fact the board was in fact detecting the card and booting normally, but the weird thing is, it boots without the card; I found it kind of eerie to access and listen to mah music, with no monitor or video card present in the system. This kind of gets me worried, if the system POSTs without the card, mightn't be my motherboard or PCi-e bus having issues. Any advice, and other than "try another PCI-e card lulz", lol, which actually might be my only option at this point..?

hackapelite

Have an old PCI card lying around that you could try lulz? Or maybe your mobo's got onboard video you didn't see

What board is it? Some boards may indeed post&boot without a video card (some comps just never have the need for a monitor, such feature could be for the convenience of not having to buy a GFX card not even used for anything but being able to boot up)... if the computer really did see the installed when it wasn't, I wouldn't think that the computer'd boot up without freezing, even trying to access a device that appears to be there but isn't should result in a spectacular crash. Thenagain, I've hot swapped PCI cards while running a system with 98SE loaded up w/o any problems, so what do I know... maybe windows (I take it you're running windows since you mentioned games?) can boot up and work without a GFX card. After all, from OS point of view, it's just an ordinary component that can output something, just like a soundcard or something... so, my guess would be that your GFX card is shot. I take it you can't try it on another computer, just to make sure?

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bragr

Well obvioulsy it the video card that has the problem. The fan spinning only means if has power. Infact if the fan never slows, the video card isn't telling fan when its hot and when its not.

Some of the motherboards that I have used don't post with a video card.
This ASUS one (Actually 6 of them) I used for a small cluster didn't bat an eye. I was running and 6 headless and administrating via SSH so I didn't need video cards (save like $120). I got one really cheap card to set up SSH on them and then removed it and set up the next system with it. I didn't end up leaving it in the control system but mainly because I din't really have anywhere else to store it.

That being said, your mobo may post for that and the fact that its not could indicate that theres a problem. Check the mobo docs for post codes. If there's one for missing video card, and its not being signaled, theres a problem. If there is no code, it doesn't post for that and enjoy using your computer with the brail method!

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This has been wisdom from Bragr