Monitor Out of Range?!?

[Negeva]

Been messing about with a machine for the last few days and I'm completely stumped. Some background; this machine is my accountants and he was 'forced' to upgrade to IE7, which upon telling him to shut down all forms of internet security before proceeding he cancelled the installation. Everything ran fine for a couple of days until he received a BSOD. The BSOD has been repaired, however now when he tried to start up his machine all he's gets is a message from the monitor: Out of range.

So far, we've removed the graphics card from his machine, tested it in one of mine and it works. So we used my graphics card and still the same Out of range message appears. So far we've tied this is several ATi and Nvidia AGP graphics cards and all with the same result - nothing.

The machine seems to boot up perfectly as we hear the CD drives spin and so on. Any suggestions will be very welcome.

[juppy]

That means the resolution is set to a higher level that the monitor is not capable of displaying. Try hitting F8 during the memory count and select the option to boot into Safe Mode. It should load with the default lower resolution driver, and then you can go in and right click on the desktop and go to the properties to change the video resolution to a lower setting that the monitor can handle. Reboot normally and see if it works then.

[Negeva]

Originally Posted by juppy That means the resolution is set to a higher level that the monitor is not capable of displaying. Try hitting F8 during the memory count and select the option to boot into Safe Mode. It should load with the default lower resolution driver, and then you can go in and right click on the desktop and go to the properties to change the video resolution to a lower setting that the monitor can handle. Reboot normally and see if it works then.

Can't do anything as it's a blank screen from start-up, past POST and so on. Even reset the BIOS hoping that might do something but nothing.

[Cricket]

Did you pull the motherboard from the case for troubleshooting?

Cricket

[Negeva]

Originally Posted by Cricket Did you pull the motherboard from the case for troubleshooting? Cricket

No, but I did check to see if any of the capacitors were bulging and if there were any cracks. All seems fine.

I've decided to try an old friend of mine that loves hardware problems to see if he can do anything with it - I'd rather spend all day removing malware than deal with hardware.

If any one has other suggestions they be welcome. If my hardware friend fixes it I post back; if only for closure.

[juppy]

Originally Posted by Negeva Can't do anything as it's a blank screen from start-up, past POST and so on. Even reset the BIOS hoping that might do something but nothing.

But it DOES POST? You get the usual single beep but you just can't see anything? If so, you might try a different monitor data cable or even a whole different monitor. If that doesn't do it, I have to agree with Cricket and say look at the motherboard going bad.

[Negeva]

Thought I'd post to let you all know what happened.

Seems that for some reason the motherboard had over-volted the AGP slot which blew it. Since it's an old socket A system we've - well I suggested and my friend is just going along for the ride - decided to build a new system and being him slightly into the modern era. Though he's adamant that he will not be touching Vista; most of his accounting software won't work and he's too cheap to buy upgrades for it.

Thanks to all that helped and confirmed my suspicions that his mobo was dead and it wasn't me being daft.