Odd Computer Problem

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yossarian

Gawd
Joined
Nov 2, 2004
Messages
799
I just tried to wake my computer from Hibernate, but the computer said the file was corrupt so it needed to restart. I hit reboot and some error text came up onscreen. It didn't make any sense to me so I powered down and restarted. On restart, it booted normally all the way into Windows where programs normally load on the task bar and such, but then the monitor lost the signal from the video card. I powered down (reboot didn't work) and restarted again, but this time a repeating text error came onscreen saying Radeon X800 XL Bios not found, searching for CD ROM, then saying Searching for floppy disk. I restarted again, but nothing happens. Power's on, but no text onscreen and no data is being sent to the monitor. Doesn't seem to bbe going into bios at all. I thought the video card might have fried, but I slipped in an old GF2 card and it doesn't put out a signal either. I'm stumped. :confused:

Asus A8V Deluxe
AMD 64 3500+ (Socket 939)
ATI Radeon X800XL AGP
Antec 430 w
2xMaxtor 160 GB Raid

All parts are new last November except the ATI which is a little over a month old.
 
so from what you've said.. it seems like window's 'hibernate' feature destroyed your computer???
try taking the hard drive out and booting... (just unplug it)
 
I could try that, but I don't know how the hard drives would prevent the initial post from occurring, or even the initial video card initialization.
 
Got a PCI card? Maybe something screwed with the AGP? I do hope you didn't set AGP voltage higher thinking it'd let you oc more or something... Make sure it's set to the standard (I think 1.5V, should be the lowest in the list) and frequency should be locked at 66MHz too (don't think this would damage a card if it's set to higher than 66MHz, but, it could cause problems.)

Hibernate shouldn't be able to directly do any damage, and you can't just claim it destroyed a computer. Truth be told, there's very little to it. It just saves your memory to the harddrive when shutting down, then, when coming back up it reloads the memory. That's it. Laptops have been doing it since the 486 days at least even.
 
I didn't do any overclocking. Everything is normal settings. I don't think Hibernate is the cause either, rather it suffered from whatever the problem is. I don't have a pci card. And, I can't try to boot off of anything since there's no post. I'm going to try resetting the bios with a jumper to see if that helps. I think this may be a MB issue.
 
Borrow or buy a PCI card. You really need one as a backup anyway. If you go to a computer show or something, you might find one of those old 1MB SVGA PCI cards even for insanely cheap prices like $5 or less. Just get something cheap. Anything will do, just so long as it can power on the system and give you a tolerable text mode. It's a good backup if you ever need to flash a messed up AGP card or your old one dies and you don't have another handy or something anyway.

I'm definitely wondering if the issue may be AGP related. You've tried different monitors, so that probably rules that out, and different video cards, so it's probably not your Radeon. AGP isn't the only thing that could mess up, but, it sure seems suspicious. It's proably not power issues since even if you increased things a bit since the problems started with new fans or something, that old GF2 isn't going to draw much power.
 
Contacted Asus, seems that it may be a fried bios due to a power surge the day before and due to the fact my high speed internet connection is not surge protected. After this, I may try to find surge protection for the coaxial line. I guess I'll find out if this is it once they send me a replacement.
 
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