Acer bios problem

Hi Everyone,
I recently upgraded to a geforce 9600 and installed the old card (8600 gt) in my wife's machine. Unfortunately it won't work because the BIOS is set to use onboard graphics and id greyed out so it can't be changed. It's an Acer Aspire T180. It really annoys me as it won't allow O/Cing either. I'd really appreciate some help on this one.
RR

ridgewayranger said:

Hi Everyone,
I recently upgraded to a geforce 9600 and installed the old card (8600 gt) in my wife's machine. Unfortunately it won't work because the BIOS is set to use onboard graphics and id greyed out so it can't be changed. It's an Acer Aspire T180. It really annoys me as it won't allow O/Cing either. I'd really appreciate some help on this one.
RR

Hi and welcome to SF. We could use a ton more info before we can give you any meaningful help. Your machine is OK right? so lets focus on hers. The acer aspire is a budget machine the specs are here Acer Aspire T180 - At A Glance - Reviews by PC Magazine
You might want to start by updating the bios from acer. I dont know how much ram it has but you need to find out this kind of info before we can really be useful to you.

Let me know abt the info

Ken

You should be able to change the BIOS setting, prior to boot. once changed, make sure that you reboot. (i use the power button) to turnoff, wait 30s or so, the power back on.

Never had any problems with my (3) different Acers that way.

Hello Again and thanks for the interest.
What can I say? At boot up it goes through all the motions, disc spinning, lights flashing and so on, but the screen remains black. These machines have only a 250 w PSU so I changed to a 500 w. The point I want to make is that using the on board graphics connection, all is well, but changing to the 6800 connection, nothing. The computer knows it is there because it is in Hardware, along with the onboard setup, but in the BIOS, under pnp/pci configurations, the first line is Init Display First, this is set to Onboard and greyed out so it cannot be changed. Why would I have this pcie 16 socket if I cannot use it? Still hoping for a solution.
RR

ridgewayranger said:

Hello Again and thanks for the interest.
What can I say? At boot up it goes through all the motions, disc spinning, lights flashing and so on, but the screen remains black. These machines have only a 250 w PSU so I changed to a 500 w. The point I want to make is that using the on board graphics connection, all is well, but changing to the 6800 connection, nothing. The computer knows it is there because it is in Hardware, along with the onboard setup, but in the BIOS, under pnp/pci configurations, the first line is Init Display First, this is set to Onboard and greyed out so it cannot be changed. Why would I have this pcie 16 socket if I cannot use it? Still hoping for a solution.
RR

some nice specs would really assist in helping with this problem.
System Specs. how to

Hi Nate,
No I did not take one out and put another in. It has on board graphics which I want to replace with a decent card so I put it in the pcie16 slot. The computer recognizes it because it is in Hardware manager BUT the bios is set to on board graphics and greyed out so I cannot change it. I tried disabling on board graphics in Hardware manager and guess what, I had no graphics at all. Had to put the OS disc in to get started again. The bios has a few things unavailable such as clock speeds and frequencies. I have read that there is a bios flash which reveals the whole thing but I'm not happy about doing this yet.

specs on mobo: 2 PCI-E 2.0 x16 graphic interface with CrossFireX support for ultimate graphics performance. You must place the 1 Card in correct slot, the 2 slot needs to have a bypass plug. since you have CrossFire support.

further info on mobo:

1. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16
2. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8
   (The PCIEx16 and PCIEx8 slots support ATI CrossFireX technology and conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
3. 3 x PCI Express x1 slot
4. 2 x PCI slots

With this info. I feel you need to give more details where the Card in inserted. and the exact spec of you Video card.

Did you setup your Video card correctly...

NVidia said:

The top of the 9500 GT features a single SLI connector, which means that dual SLI is an option and that 3-way SLI is not possible. This shouldn't be a deal breaker as most mainstream motherboards have just a single x16 PCI Express graphics slot. The small black 2-pin connector next to the SLI bridge is an input for digital audio pass through on an HDMI connection. The GeForce 9500 GT GPU natively supports HDMI and DisplayPort. Just like we noted in the paragraph before it will be up to the add-in card partners to release boards with HDMI, DVI-to-HDMI dongle, or DisplayPort at their discretion.

PS: remember Win7 7100 had many problems I recommend you UPGRADE. IMHO 7100 was a very sloppy release, and performance was PUKEy.