Well, that was a short flying career....!

[Mithras 87]

Brand new PC, fresh installs of FSX, REX and lots of lovely scenery, with twenty or so flights inbetween to check scenery. Last night I decided I'd finished my installs and initiated a defrag. Finished it, shut down and went to bed.

 

Today I found out the defrag did something horrible.... my monitor only displays a No Signal message, despite checking cables etc. F8 brought my to the Windows login page, ...and I found FSX still works. But F8 doesnt work anymore, none of the F buttons do. I've tried all sorts, holding the power button down before switching power on at the sovket, reseating the RAM, unplugging peripherals.

 

The PC company suggest reinstalling Windows, but not sure I can do that at the moment, otherwise they recommend unplugging the graphics card.

 

Both are big jobs I've never done before, and I thought the work was over and I'd get the start flying FSX at last! I've really lost the willpower on this one. It's a very depeessing state of affairs.

[Q_flyer 766]

Frustrating I can imagine, but ...... if it's a brand new PC, it's not like you had years worth of data on it, so a re-install of the Operating System (Windows) really shouldn't be a big deal? ...... An hour of your time (if that, these days) and you'll be fighting fit again!

[Mithras 87]

I'd be up for that after a deep breath, Dave, but I can't access anything at all and the PC doesn't do anything when I boot up with the Windows disc. I've just got a blank screen, no Windows sounds or anything either. No way to get in and reinstall ... :(

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[pmanhart 176]

First try moving your monitor cable to any onboard video ports (if it's a newer board with onboard video), as the BIOS may have decided that it doesn't want to use your GPU. If this works, you need to enter the BIOS, disable the onboard video, shut it down, move your monitor cable, then boot back up and verify that the motherboard is using your GPU instead of the onboard video.

 

If that doesn't work...

 

Try different power connectors for your GPU.

 

And if that doesn't work......

 

Try resetting the BIOS. The motherboard manual should tell you if you either have a button, or a jumper to move positions (follow the instructions carefully).

 

If that doesn't work, you're looking at reseating all the parts in order below (shut down, unplug the PSU, then carefully remove each of these components, check for damage, and when sure that nothing is wrong visually then reinsert into their slots). After reseating an item, put your PC back together and give it a shot.

 

1. GPU

2. RAM

3. CPU

[Mithras 87]

A happy ending! I contacted a local repair company, but when the guy failed to show up I did some more Googling, got brave and did the following:

 

uninserted the NVIDIA board, then found the battery on the BIOS board behind it and took it out and put it back in again, then restarted without plugging the NVIDIA back in. It woke up, told me my BIOS was corrupt but it would repair it using backup BIOS. Then it took me straight into windows! I plugged the graphics card back in, but I think it was resetting the BIOS battery that did the trick. 

 

Just so you know for the future!!!!!!!

 

I'm on holiday for a week now, so I get my flight sim time in after a;;  <happy>

[Kuragiman 227]

Generally, when you have that many problems going on at once, and the PC is still powering on, I have found that the BIOS has gone stupid for one reason or another.   I usually go right for that sucker first thing when the PC gets temperamental.  It seems to fix most problems that are not hardware failures.    Glad you got it going.   Now get in that plane and enjoy the lovely scenery!

[Reader 2,021]

A likely explanation may be that Windows put the PC to sleep after the defrag had finished.

When this PC was new, I also left it running overnight and the next morning it was off and wouldn't work

at all.

A call to the suppliers revealed that the motherboard didn't respond well to the sleep command.

I was instructed to remove the battery which resets the CMOS and returns the BIOS to its default

settings.

Since then, I have disabled sleep and hibernation in Windows and had no further problems.

 

Regards,

Nick.

[Adam T Lutley 12]

First try moving your monitor cable to any onboard video ports (if it's a newer board with onboard video), as the BIOS may have decided that it doesn't want to use your GPU. If this works, you need to enter the BIOS, disable the onboard video, shut it down, move your monitor cable, then boot back up and verify that the motherboard is using your GPU instead of the onboard video.

 

If that doesn't work...

 

Try different power connectors for your GPU.

 

And if that doesn't work......

 

Try resetting the BIOS. The motherboard manual should tell you if you either have a button, or a jumper to move positions (follow the instructions carefully).

 

If that doesn't work, you're looking at reseating all the parts in order below (shut down, unplug the PSU, then carefully remove each of these components, check for damage, and when sure that nothing is wrong visually then reinsert into their slots). After reseating an item, put your PC back together and give it a shot.

 

1. GPU

2. RAM

3. CPU

 

I've always used MOBO's with on board graphics for one reason which is to easily troubleshoot a dead GPU or other graphics issues. This is precisely what happened to me about 6 months ago when my NVIDIA EVGA 670FTW bit the dust.

Regards