posted
Yesterday I couldn't get my desktop to wake up, so I did a hard reboot. Hmmm. It would get to the Windows startup screen, and then the graphics would go haywire and the monitor would go into energy saving mode (no signal). I figured out I could boot into safe mode, but the normal boot wouldn't finish. Checking the BIOS I noticed the system clock was set to 00:00:00 and the date was sometime in 2004. Great.
So, I went to my friendly neighborhood Walmart and picked up a CMOS battery. I installed it, fixed the system time and date, and looked around for anything else that might need adjusting. Tried a reboot, and got the same results.
I knew the drive was good because it would boot into safe mode with no problem. The screen going blank seemed to be an issue with the video card. I deleted the video driver, and this time I got it to boot normally into Windows...up until it detected the video card and tried to install the new drivers. The screen goes black as the video card stops sending a signal.
It can see the VGA portion of the card, but when it tries to kick over to normal video, it dies. This is a Dell machine without onboard video. The card is an nvidea geforce FX5200. My question for any computer geeks out there is, how would a dead CMOS battery affect the video card?
My mind wanders. And that's not a good thing, 'cause it's too small to be out there alone. Posts: 3129 | From: Tooele, UT | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I don't know enough about puters, but do you think maybe it could be the video card?
-------------------- aka:Cisco the "Traveling Millennium Sign Artist" http://www.franciscovargas.com Fresno, CA 93703 559 252-0935 "to live life, is to love life, a sign of no life, is a sign of no love"...Cisco 12'98 Posts: 3576 | From: Fresno, Ca, the great USA | Registered: Dec 1998
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My mind wanders. And that's not a good thing, 'cause it's too small to be out there alone. Posts: 3129 | From: Tooele, UT | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I'm no guru either..but here in our village in Mexico we replaced a few CMOS batteries in the school's computers and they booted up just fine.
Didn't mess with anything else though.
-------------------- Dave Grundy retired in Chelem,Yucatan,Mexico/Hensall,Ontario,Canada 1-519-262-3651 Canada 011-52-1-999-102-2923 Mexico cell 1-226-785-8957 Canada/Mexico home
posted
I forwarded your problem to a friend o' mine, and he said (and this is only a guess and possibly way off target) that you might actually have downloaded a bug that is in the computer itself.
Though it is only a distant possibility, if all fails, can you go online still and download combofix and get it to run? In safemode? Just a possibilty if swapping video card don't work.
-------------------- Michael Gene Adkins The Fontry 1576 S Hwy 59 Watts OK 74964 Posts: 845 | From: Watts, OK USA | Registered: Jun 1999
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posted
Thanks for the replies. The death of the battery seems to be what started the problem, so I doubt there is malware involved. The machine was working great the night before.
I just realized it isn't seeing my SATA drive, so it can't boot from it. I'm actually booting into safe mode on another drive that has an old windows install. The SATA is detected by the BIOS, but it won't allow it to boot. When I try to choose it, it fails because it's like it isn't there.
I may just reformat the IDE drive and see if a new install will fix the problem. This is getting rediculous. Too bad safe mode has icons the size of alaska. I would use that for a while.
My mind wanders. And that's not a good thing, 'cause it's too small to be out there alone. Posts: 3129 | From: Tooele, UT | Registered: Mar 2005
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-------------------- Michael Gene Adkins The Fontry 1576 S Hwy 59 Watts OK 74964 Posts: 845 | From: Watts, OK USA | Registered: Jun 1999
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My mind wanders. And that's not a good thing, 'cause it's too small to be out there alone. Posts: 3129 | From: Tooele, UT | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
have similar problem with a computer where i work, where every time it is started, boots and beeps that cannot find drives. have option to press f-1 and then it will continue on into windows. been doing this quite a while. got some time to try to find problem but no fix yet. computer tech where purchased says to quit messin with it and bring it in. backed it up today and tomorrow goes out for service. have a pci device which i attempted to diagnose with, but says there might be some kind of a busframe issue; whatever that is. leaving this to tech. your issue could also be motherboard related. this one is a dell also. good luck.
-------------------- Bill Cosharek Bill Cosharek Signs N.Huntingdon,Pa
bcosharek@juno.com Posts: 703 | From: N.Huntingdon, Pa, USA | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
you lost me. you say it's a dell with onboard video and then you also mention a video "card". Is this really the case? do you actually have a video card plugged in? because this would be absolutely possible. If this is the case, your cmos did a reset which would be defaulting back to onboard video, instead of the actual card you have installed.
I could be understanding you wrong and the only video you have is the actual onboard (not a card) video.
-------------------- Bruce Evans Crown Graphics Chino, CA graphics@westcoach.net Posts: 911 | From: Chino, CA | Registered: Nov 1998
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Bruce, it does not have onboard video. It's got an AGP video card installed. I wish I had the cash to go with Si's idea. I'm getting tired of messing with this problem. I'm just glad my data is still intact on the drives.
My mind wanders. And that's not a good thing, 'cause it's too small to be out there alone. Posts: 3129 | From: Tooele, UT | Registered: Mar 2005
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