Dead monitor and no video?

[robster59]

Hello,
I've been using a Gateway GT5028 media computer with a Gateway FPD2185W LCD monitor for home use. At the time of purchase, I changed the stock power supply to one Gateway listed as acceptable for that motherboard, a 485W supply so that I could also add a Quadro FX (I forget which one) graphics card. The monitor was connected to the video card with a DVI cable.

Everything has been working perfectly for 19 months until a few days ago when I discovered that the monitor's screen was black. I disconnected the monitor and tried connecting it to a different computer with the VGA cable. The second computer didn't have DVI connection. The monitor was still black. I took the monitor from the second computer and hooked it to first, but the display was also black. I can hear the computer going through the boot cycle and hear windows starting, but no video. I opened the computer and found nothing loose.

Does anyone have any ideas, suggestions or thoughts on what to try next or how to check/repair what is going on. I'm at a loss for ideas. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time.

 

[mpierce]

Me too!

Hi Robster,

My GW GT5028 started doing the same thing about a week ago (end of August). I purchased it as an open box special from BestBuy and about 3 months after getting it the onboard graphics processor stopped sending red to the display. I then purchased an ATI x1050 and put it in the PCIe slot and it worked great until a few days ago. The x1050 would not respond so I switched back to the onboard gfx controller and used that to diagnose the system. For some reason the x1050 was not being recognized even though the system could tell some kind of VGA controller was there. I re-installed all the hardware and booted it up yesterday and the system worked fine until the next reboot. The next reboot did a hard drive check, rebooted, and now both the onboard and PCIe gfx processors are non responsive. I replaced the power supply thinking that maybe there wasn't enough for the gfx controllers (and I saw my LCD display oscillating in and out of analog power save mode so I thought maybe it was caught in a continuous reboot) but that didn't help. I can hear it boot up and start up windows and can even log into the first available account (it has no password) but there is no display.

I tried plugging in some old mga gfx cards into the PCI slots but no go, it doesn't even sense them as generic VGA controllers. I'm going to try borrowing a PCIe gfx controller from work to see if just by chance everything burned out.

Could be the MB is bad or one of the bridge chips got fried in a recent thunder storm, but I doubt it since it was misbehaving before the storm. I read on another board that it could be that the CMOS battery may be bad so I think that's the next thing I'll try.

Let me know if you come across anything.

Thanks,

Mathew Pierce