Can I remote into a computer without a videocard?

[WonderBot]

Kind of a tricky situation...

I'm trying to help my friend who's video card went out on his Vista machine. His computer is old and he would like to buy a new one rather than buying a video card replacement, but without video he cant backup his files.

So here is my question, is possible for me to remote into his computer from my Win 7 machine? I do not know if he even has RDP setup, but thinking if maybe I could atleast get to the login. Kind of a catch 22 (Scratching my head).

 

[phailyoor]

I'm not sure if the computer will post if there is no video card. Try your luck. If it boots, the go from there.

 

[M1GU31]

What you could do is remove his hard-drive from his pc and connect it to yours and copy his files like what ever he cares about like pictures,music ect and then when he gets a new one,copy them over.Also by video card,is it a dedicated video card or on board on the motherboard?If it's dedicated,you could probably still get into by getting the pc to connect through the on board and setting it in the bios to use on board instead and backup his files like that. If it's onboard as in it doesn't have a third party video card and runs off the motherboard alone then do the first option I told you and you could save his files if the hard-drive still works.

 

[WonderBot]

What you could do is remove his hard-drive from his pc and connect it to yours and copy his files like what ever he cares about like pictures,music ect and then when he gets a new one,copy them over.Also by video card,is it a dedicated video card or on board on the motherboard?If it's dedicated,you could probably still get into by getting the pc to connect through the on board and setting it in the bios to use on board instead and backup his files like that. If it's onboard as in it doesn't have a third party video card and runs off the motherboard alone then do the first option I told you and you could save his files if the hard-drive still works.

His computer is a HP M800N and I'm not sure about how the video card is setup, but he has told me that there is no display at all when he boots up. The screen just says "no signal" and he gets no loading screens or even a option for BIOS.

 

[doubled822]

Be sure to tell him to check the simple things first. Loose cables or connections, etc.

Otherwise, I would follow M1's suggestion. If he never has used Remote Desktop, it is likely to fail because RDP is not enabled by default on Windows.