PCA Forums

Found an old Micron PC, PII 300, Daimond Viper V330 display adapter, plugged it in, hooked up an old Hitachi CM751U 18" monitor...fired it up and all good. Ran Belarc to see what was on it and then decided to plug in an old Dell 1500 FP Monitor. No video. Put the Hitachi back on, no video. I can hear beeps during boot...is there any way to "feel my way" into safe mode so I can get the monitor to function so I can adjust the monitor settings? any thoughts welcome.

Wellcome to PCA!
Well, you can repeatedly press F5 after the mobo beeps to enter safe mode, but I don't think that will help you.

No matter what got changed, you should still have a picture in BIOS during the POST screen whcih would allow you to press F8 to enter Safe Mode. Changes in Windows do not affect BIOS. During the POST screen the video card is in legacy VGA mode which any monitor will support.

If there's no picture in BIOS during the POST screen then the card probably died.

I had a system do that to me also, I pulled the video card out, reinserted it, and it was back going again like nothing happened.

Zyfer has a point. Worth trying. If it's an old system it might just be some corrosion on the video card edge connector contacts. Removing an re-inserting the card will clean them. If they look dingy, then you can clean them by rubbing them with a NEW CLEAN pencil eraser untill they're shiny.

are there a lot of beeps on startup or just one or 2 short ones?

i had one go nuts on me once and i didn't know why. eventually, i realized i had moved the box and the card likely slipped, so i opened it up and pushed in on the video card, then it was all right.

Thanks guys, while I was waiting for your replies I pulled out the card, reinserted it and everything booted fine. Thanks again.