[Wolfie-Wolfhound]

Hi,

This my first post here.

I should have known better, but I got a little careless when attempting to strip down my PC Chips M810LR desktop.

After powering it down and removing all the cables, I removed my ATI AIW 7500 Video Card (without uninstalling the drivers first). I also removed my Sound Blaster 5.1 card and swapped 512MB RAM for 256MB. I then connected my monitor cable to the original onboard video connector (which I had previously disabled of course when I installed my ATI AIW card).

When I rebooted after having done all of this, the monitor displayed the usual initial boot up info (BIOS etc). I was then prompted to reboot in various Safe Modes. I chose "Safe Mode with Networking".

I was then given a choice to logon as Administrator or one of my user accounts. I chose Administrator.

The machine then displayed a bunch of garbled characters and seem to do this forever. I finally hit the reset button, held it for about 10 seconds, and let go. This is when my problems started.

At this point, the hard drive light seemed to go on as it usually does during the boot up sequence, but my monitor would no longer display anything. It seems to recognize that something is connected, because it doesn't display the "Check monitor cable" message. However, it remains blank with the power light blinking, as if it doesn't recognize the card.

I then plugged my old ATI AIW card back in and got the same thing: blank screen and blinking power light.

I've tried a different AGP video card, no video card, even booting from a boot CD -- the screen remains blank.

Help! Any ideas on how to get the monitor to turn on, with whatever video card?

Thanks very much in advance...

[Wolfie-Wolfhound]

Well I think I answered my own question.

I ended up changing the jumper settings on my mobo to clear the CMOS settings. I then removed the AIW card and plugged the monitor cable back into the original onboard mobo video connector.

When I booted up again I finally got the monitor to work.

At that point I was able to reboot with a boot disk, format the hard drive, and reload Windows XP from my setup disk.

Whew! Hard lesson learned there. I'll have to be more patient in the future. Next time I'll uninstall the video card drivers properly before simply popping out the card. Poor old Windows can't seem to handle that.

Wolfie Wolfhound