Please help me FIX my computer !!! *again*

[X-Caliber]

Hi,

I was out of town for a few days, and my sister was apartment-sitting, and in the process, has somehow screwed up my computer....

Whenever I power up, I just see a white screen with a flashing cursor. I have control of the keyboard, and I did a control-alt-del and it did a reset, but I just saw another white screen. There is also a flashing cursor, which moves down when I press enter. I did a hard reset, pressed delete, and got a different screen which has vertical lines running down the page (presumably the bios page).

She claimed the problem started after she put the computer to sleep, and it wouldn't turn back on.

I tried resetting the BIOS, but it's hard to tell if I shorted out the two wires properly - so I just popped out the battery.

I also took everything out, with the exception of the Parhelia and 1 stick of ram, but this problem still keeps reoccuring. Any advice?

[Wombat]

Does the machine sound intelligent (drives sound like they're booting)? Sounds like maybe a corrupt video BIOS. Try a BIOS recovery disk or different video card.

[X-Caliber]

The machine does indeed *sound-intelligent*. I don't have another video card handy; is there any other way to reset the video bios. Could it also be the system bios?

[capt. marvel]

I know you said..

"Whenever I power up, I just see a white screen with a flashing cursor. I have control of the keyboard, and I did a control-alt-del and it did a reset, but I just saw another white screen."

just to make sure...you have, no post screen, memory test etc. before this right... just trying to help isolate the problem if its a bios/hardware boot issue or an OS problem....... I'm thinking most bad starts I've had might not give you a good keyboard without a bios error message or something. Also to reset the mobo bios I believe your supposed to disconnect the power also.

Also...does the computer your typing on now have a video card..perhaps???

just trying to help...

[X-Caliber]

Hi,

Thanks for your help....

There is no post screen, or memory test visible. My harddrives are all disconnected, so its not an OS issue. I also removed the battery for the bios, and left the power connector off for a few hours, so the bios settings should have been reset (right? are they erased if the battery is removed?)

[rylan]

Sounds like the video card bios got hosed, or the card itself is bad.

[ZokesPro]

Wouldn't hurt to try a different video card, also could very well be your monitor too.

[X-Caliber]

have two monitors, same on both. I will try another video card tommorrow. So Matrox has a lifetime warranty on video cards, right?

[spadnos]

Do you have a boot manager installed?
(LILO, GRUB, Partition Magic (or whatever they call their manager), etc.)

- Steve

[X-Caliber]

nope, no boot manager

[X-Caliber]

well, it appears that my video card is somehow damaged. I swapped it out with an ATI Radeon 9200, and everything booted up properly. btw, the ATI card is complete garbage, running dual displays @ 1600x1200x85HZ, the screen is UNREADABLE, and the dual display mode keeps crashing.

now, what can I do with my Parhelia? I tried a PCI video card, but my computer won't even boot. That is, I left the AGP slot vacant, plugged in a PCI card, and the computer would not POST. I went to the BIOS, and told it to boot the PCI card first, but nothing happened. My plan was to somehow boot the machine from the PCI video card, with the Parhelia in the AGP slot, and then somehow flash the bios for the Parhelia. But I can't even boot the machine with a PCI video card (which is a Radeon 9200). Any suggestions?

[Kurt]

Just to be sure, it might be your mainboard BIOS that's corrupt. Have you tried another AGP card? If the other AGP card doesn't work either, you might want to try flashing the MB BIOS and see if the P works afterwards.

[X-Caliber]

Hi,

Thanks for you're response. I tried an ATI Radeon 9200 AGP card, and it worked fine. Well, fine is an understatement; the picture quality @ 1600x1200x85HZ is terrible. Hydrovision (the ATI version of dual-head keeps crashing). My motherboard is a P2B, and Matrox doesn't sell the 3.3V Parhelia anymore, so I don't know what card to use. I also don't know if my card is still under warranty.

[G400SG16mb]

maybe a cheap second hand Matrox G550 DVI AGP would do for you? Or G4x0 if you don't want DVI.

Are you running that Radeon in analogue-out mode? They must be pretty bad without DVI.

[X-Caliber]

Hey,

Thanks for the response. I need something with a bit more POP than a G550. I have been looking at a GeForce 6800; but we'll see. I would prefer to keep my parhelia.