Decently Terrible Performance (Help me?)

I can't really describe it much better than I did before. There's no way to see what I'd be doing in the bios because my monitor is just a black screen until I'm able to login to windows.

Death1223 said:

I can't really describe it much better than I did before. There's no way to see what I'd be doing in the bios because my monitor is just a black screen until I'm able to login to windows.

Certainly very odd.

All video cards are supposed to be able to work in VGA mode, driven by both the BIOS for text as well as well as basic video operations from the MS generic video drivers... even without manufacturer-provided drivers for functionally enhanced operation to utilize all hardware capabilities.

Even if your BIOS is currently sitting at "quick boot" so that most self-tests and other verbose boot-time progress messages are suppressed, you'd think there would be at least something minimal presented.

The ASUS boards use the DEL key to enter the BIOS at boot time. The user manual for your Rampage III Extreme board says: Press <Del> during the Power-On Self-Test (POST) to enter the Setup utility.

So I'd think even if you are currently set to "quick boot" mode that pressing DEL continually at boot time should surely get you into the BIOS. Does this not happen?

So, two new mysteries: (1) why nothing from the BIOS normally goes out at boot time from your video card to your monitor, (2) does pressing DEL allow you enter the SETUP utility to talk to the BIOS, with something now on the screen?

It used to show me everything that went on, but I removed a monitor that died on me and since then it has been black. Not sure if it has anything to do with it but that's when I noticed it changed.

And also it's not just the bios, basically everything before the windows login screen is black. The chkdsk, boot device selection(F8), everything. It's all a black screen and my monitor like flickers when I finally get to the login screen(Like when it changes resolutions.)

I'll test the DEL thing after I finish downloading Dying Light on steam.

Alright, here's an update:
The start-up seems fixed since this is the second time I restarted and there was no delay in my desktop showing up and me being able to access the browser or anything for that matter.
However, I tried spamming the DEL(Delete) key on my keyboard throughout start up. My screen didn't show anything, but I sat there spamming it for 5 minutes straight so I have to assume it went to the BIOs but I just couldn't see it due to my screen remaining black.

Can you connect your current monitor to the port you used for the monitor you removed?
Maybe some setting in BIOS is still trying to use that port first.

That's the thing, it never showed up on that monitor, it always showed up on the main monitor... but I'll try to get into BIOS with the black screen then switch my monitor to all ports to check if it shows up.

Death1223 said:

That's the thing, it never showed up on that monitor, it always showed up on the main monitor... but I'll try to get into BIOS with the black screen then switch my monitor to all ports to check if it shows up.

I have a dual-monitor setup, and BIOS output goes to BOTH of them at boot time.

But this is a single graphics card with dual outputs (DP and DVI) to two monitors. This is different from your setup where you have dual graphics cards. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the BIOS picked one of those two cards to "talk to", and then whatever 1/2 monitors you have that are connected to THAT particular graphics card would get the output from the BIOS through that particular card. Any 1/2 monitors connected to the other graphics card would thus get nothing from the BIOS.

So, if the monitor you say died and that you've now removed but when it was alive it used to get BIOS output, clearly it must have been connected to a port on one of your two graphics cards. And that must have been the "active" graphics card for the BIOS. With that monitor now removed, did you not put a new monitor in its place, connected to that same graphics card? If you haven't then the current absence of BIOS output at boot time to whatever monitor(s) you are left with is not a surprise to me given my hypothesis about only one of your two video cards being used by the BIOS, if you no longer have a monitor connected to that particular video card.

Your SPECS talk about two graphics cards, but don't talk about your monitor arrangement. What monitors do you have, and connected to which outputs from either/both of your graphics cards?

And as David suggested, if the arrangement of working-monitor and one of your two graphics cards USED TO emit BIOS output but no longer does now that you've removed that dead monitor, why don't you just put a working monitor back in its place... on that same graphics card? At least for this experiment, if not permanently.

Alright, so I had attempted to do what I said I would do earlier. I rarely shutdown/restart my computer. It froze up a few minutes ago so I found that it was a good time as any to try that switching monitor thing. (Which by the way means that we haven't fixed that freezing... which is unfortunate.)

Anyways, I switched my main monitor to all of the open ports and nothing happened. Same black screen (No Signal bouncing around the screen)

Hmm... I felt it best to ask myself "Now what?" and now I am here to ask that same question, because she has begun to hate me.

You can try putting a bootable CD in the CD/DVD drive.
If your first boot device is the CD/DVD drive it should pause for a few seconds to allow you to press enter to boot the CD.
If it does display that screen you may be able to press the DEL key to enter BIOS, or it may display some other key to use to enter BIOS.

If that doesn't work, another possibility is disconnect the boot drive.
Then Windows can't start and you might be able to get into BIOS from the error screen.

Resetting BIOS is also a possibility, but if you do that without knowing all your current settings, you might have a bigger problem of not even being able to start Windows without trying a LOT of different settings.

? I can't start up my screen without making my computer select the boot device, otherwise it will tell me to select a different boot device. (It's had this problem and the chkdsk one for like months before the monitor problem so I can do it without looking now.)