Well, my system just finally decided to kick over, but I have nothing on my display. Windows did its little chime, everything is buzzing away and I've just logged into Windows and heard the sign in sound. It seems that I've got a DOA graphics card. I'm going to get onto the people I bought it off and see what they say.

Already tried. I've even tried changing PCIe slots. At the moment I have a display. It seems to come on sometimes when Windows loads, but not before that.

So here is the updated problem: When the computer starts I have no display. When Windows and the display drivers load the display sometimes comes on but when I restart it disappears only to possibly return with Windows. Different PCIe slots, Power connections or DVI connections don't make any difference.

They are, and for the moment everything is back to normal. I've finally got the POST screen displaying and BIOS opening. I'm not happy with the way the card is behaving and I'll be asking for it to be declared DOA tomorrow.

Is it your old hard drive? you may need to buy a new one and load windows on to that.

waspiflab wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2009 at 10:37am:

The card is a brand new Zotac GTX280 Amp! Edition. I'm using an OCZ GameXstream 850 PSU. The hard drive is also brand new and only had Windows installed less than a week ago.

NickN wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2009 at 10:46am:


My problem doesn't seem to be linked to drivers. It occurs straight from start up and then fixes itself when the drivers and windows loads, or sometimes it doesn't even do that. My monitor turns on and off as if the graphics card is also turning on and off, with the monitor being woken by the card but then displaying No Signal when the card turns off. While the problem was happening I tried different DVI slots on the monitor and card, I checked the power cables to the card and even swapped them around for the other one and I tried switching the PCIe slot the card was using. None of these fixed the problem. The only PCIe setting in the BIOS is the PCIe Freq which I leave on default at 100MHz. When the problem fixed itself last night it did so in stages. Firstly The computer would boot with no display then Windows would load with no display. I used key commands to shut down and next time it started there was no display during boot, but display when Windows loaded. Two or three reboots later and I had display from boot. I'll give different drivers a go to rule them out, but I'm not holding my breath for an improvement.

The graphics card has been ruled out as being the problem. Yesterday by pure chance I found a post online from someone who was habving the same problem but he was blaming his Acer screen. I have an Acer screen and decided to connect my PC to a TV to see if the results were the same. I used the same DVI to HDMI cable and the display showed on hte TV right from the POST screen. Looks like I need to change the monitor.

Where is this post located? I Would like to read it also.

I'm running two monitors, an Acer 22" and a Proview 22" and my Acer does the exact same thing, but I always thought it was because I was using two monitors.

The Proview doesn't experience this ever, while it's consistent on the Acer.