Add a video driver when the computer has no video

Hello Experts,

I have an Advent computer that went belly up. The monitor screen went
black after a few minutes of flickering. The computer ended up with a
broken video route that may have caused other damage to the motherboard.
Is it likely that the board is otherwise sound? How to test?

If I want to get that computer going again, I need to get a route via a
video card that could work and have a driver. Adding the driver to it
could be a real problem. The Advent has a CD player but can it work in
that case? The monitor would still be black so how do you solve this
situation?

Help greatly appreciated.

TIA

 

Had a thought. In this situation could popping a CD, with the right
filter, into the computer be able install the filter where it should be
normally?

TIA

 

You have spent far tto much time and effort on this board/problem. It's time
to get a new motherboard and move on down the line.

Have you gotten your meter out of storage and checked for the operating
voltages of the power supply?

Have you determined that the boot sector of the HDD is working or not?

You have posted at least a dozen questions about this computer that are
basically fundamental electronics. It is difficult to tell what your problem
is from this side of the Interweb -- Thank you Mr. Gore -- but from what I
have been able to gleem, whatever the problem is, you have pretty much come
up with a dead mother board, dead power supply, or dead boot sector on the
hard drive.

My money is on the motherboard going belly up.

 

You need a bootable CD that can start Windows, and then load the video
driver. If you have a Windows CD, then it is time to reinstall Windows from
scratch. You will loose anything that is on the hard drive, but that's the
way the cookie crumbles.

They make a device for about 20 bucks that will turn your existing HDD into
a USB device. You can then connect the HDD to your laptop to extract the
files -- NOT PROGRAMS, JUST FILES -- to either the HDD of the laptop or to
another storage media, then reinstall the HDD back into the Advent to
reinstall Windows AND WIPE OUT THE DATA ON THE DRIVE. This will re-establish
the drive's boot sector with bootable information that will help get your
machine going again.

You can have a dead boot sector but still be able to see the drive with the
BIOS -- Setup Screen. If this is true, then the machinen will start, display
the splash screen with the maker's mark on it, then the screen will go
blank. The maker's mark might not be displayed, but if it is then the video
has enough instructions to continue loading Windows. If you can get to the
BIOS screen, then the video instructions are deep enough to load Windows. If
Windows does not load, the problem is that there is no boot sector on the
HDD. You _might_ be able to reload to this HDD, or you might need a new HDD.

If you have the original Windows CD, then this is your next step.

The video drivers will give you full control over the various video options
that might exist, but without the driver, the video should give at least
basic functionality -- 800x600, or a little better -- and look more or less
like Safe Mode.

 

You don't understand the situation. He put in a replacement motherboard,
but is having problems getting the Advent OEM Windows 7 running. It might
take a repair install, using the COA on the outside of the PC, to make
it work with his new motherboard. If he uses the "restore" option
in the Advent software, it's probably going to fail on SLIC activation.

To get around this "extra work", of downloading a Windows 7 DVD, burning
a DVD and doing a repair install, he wants to revert to the *old* motherboard.
The one, that for all intents and purposes, appears to be dead.

So, here's the deal. If a *working* video card is plugged into a computer,
the OS has a fallback VESA driver to make the video card work. The video
card is also designed to VESA standards, for a couple of known resolutions.
Even the BIOS, uses the VESA information, to drive the display, and
that's how the BIOS is able to draw the screen early in POST.

And that's how anybody is able to see the screen, when plugging in a
strange new monitor. It's some VESA modes.

The driver end of things, is *not* the problem. Something else
is the problem.

*******

Video cards are available to fit any sort of slot. They include:

1) PCI Express x16 (this is the slot that's quite possibly ruined)
2) PCI Express x1 (hard to find, made at one time)
3) AGP (the older video slot standard, this one is almost gone as well)
4) PCI (A lot of motherboards had one or two of those slots, cards still made)
5) USB (see next example)

The DisplayLink company makes chips to create a USB display. This
one claims to support VESA - even if the BIOS couldn't display on
the screen, it might work when Windows finds it and uses the VESA
driver already in the OS. (The BIOS may not be expecting a display
device on USB, which is why the BIOS screen might not work there.
I don't know to what extent these work at BIOS level.) But the
VESA part of it, should work in Windows.

HIS Multi-View II Video Adapter (Mac & Window 7 compatible version)
HMV2-MAC-PC USB to DVI Interface $45
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815136004

That particular one, comes with a DVI to VGA adapter in the package.
So can run either a DVI or a VGA monitor.

If I had to resurrect his old motherboard, I'd be using (4), a PCI
video card. I own a PCI FX5200 for this very reason, to deal with
busted video. I use the PCI FX5200, if I'm flashing the BIOS chip
on another video card.

But the days of using my PCi FX5200 are limited, because there are
motherboards now with nothing but PCI Express slots. While the
DisplayLink is an interesting distraction, I don't know if I'd want
to gamble on it as my first solution.

This is an example of a PCI 6200 card, for $40. Cards like this
are not "fast", because they're bus bandwidth limited. But you can
still run Windows this way.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130466

(Picture)
http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/14-130-466-S04?$S640W$

Paul