Athlon PC Desktop Won't display, troubleshoot

Hey guys im trying to help my buddy fix his athlon desktop, Its bootings into windows ( i can hear the sounds) but theres nothing displaying on the monitor, i tried my own monitor, same problem. I tested his videocard in my pc works fine. Any idea what it could be? Ive never ran into anything like this before. Usually its the monitor, but ive tested 2 workings ones. thanks.


specs

amd (not sure which one)
gigabyte ga-m55plus
Generic Corsair memory
BFG geforce 7800.
win7 x86

Do you know what PSU he has? It's possible that the PSU isn't kicking out enough power for the gfx card, especially as it is a particularly beefy card he has.

Does that motherboard have onboard video? If yes, does it work? You may have to remove the add-in card and reset the BIOS to defaults with the motherboard jumper. I think I would reset the BIOS to defaults regardless. Just make sure you do it with the power off and the PC unplugged from the wall to avoid damaging your motherboard. Also make sure to put the jumper back in the original position before you power up again.

Wow, I left the jump in and turned it on then turned it off right away then took out the jumper off. I thought it had to boot up for a second to reset. still booted up, thank god.

Why would i disable onboard graphics if i'm using the onboard card? to see if there a conflict between the onboard and the geforce card? Not sure what u mean by your last 3 sentences.

Britton30 said:

Hopefully you took the CMOS reset jumper off before powering up, it will fry the motherboard if left on. Power has to be off to reset it.


While using the onboard VGA did you disable onboard graphics? I have a no display issue with my Athlon socket 939 too. I need to pull the power cable out after powering up once or twice to get my display back. I have only onboard VGA. you might try it, waiting long enough that Windows is booted fully.

In the old days you had to disable the onboard graphics in order to use an add on card. You had to tell the motherboard that you added a video card and not to use the onboard anymore. Its pretty well automatic these days but you still might have to change a setting in the BIOS. My BIOS has an option to set what card gets initialized first. I have it set to PCIe, PCI, Onboard. It will first look for a PCIe video card. If it doesn't find one it will look for a PCI Video card etc. By default its set to Onboard, PCIe, PCI. If you have a similar setting you may have to change it to PCIe.

EDIT: You were really lucky you didn't fry your motherboard while reseting the BIOS with the jumper.

Hey, in the bios the onboard GPU doesnt have a disable, only has 2 options, Always enable & enable if no ext PEG.

Manual link.
http://www.manualowl.com/m/Gigabyte/.../Manual/207753

alphanumeric said:

In the old days you had to disable the onboard graphics in order to use an add on card. You had to tell the motherboard that you added a video card and not to use the onboard anymore. Its pretty well automatic these days but you still might have to change a setting in the BIOS. My BIOS has an option to set what card gets initialized first. I have it set to PCIe, PCI, Onboard. It will first look for a PCIe video card. If it doesn't find one it will look for a PCI Video card etc. By default its set to Onboard, PCIe, PCI. If you have a similar setting you may have to change it to PCIe.

EDIT: You were really lucky you didn't fry your motherboard while reseting the BIOS with the jumper.