Motherboard Failure?

I have a 2004 Pentium 4 PC running XPSP3 that uses two video cards.

A 17" monitor is used as the primary desktop and runs off of a PCI videocard. There are twin hi-res monitors that run off a PCIexpress card.

I recently moved, and upon assembling the computer, I got no signal to the 17" monitor. The other two monitors just showed the black signal expected until the computer finishes booting and the desktop extends to those to monitors.

I first went in and checked all the cards and connections to see that nothing wiggled loose during the move. I alos had been getting the battery replacement warning, so I replaced the battery; still no go.

By shifting cables around, etc, I determined that the monitor and it's cable work normally. I moved the PCI card to a new slot, without effect.

Suspecting the video card, I found a new PCI compatible card. I installed that card without any effect, either in the orignal PCI slot or in the alternate slot.

I tried booting off of the CD with the recovery disc, but still same result.

I took the PCI card out entirely, and just booted with the PCIexpress dual monitor card. I just got a buzzing warning sound, then I got a blinking cursor on each monitor. The cursor did not respond to either keyboard or mouse......

So I'm thinking its the motherboard. If so, I've long gotten my money's worth out of this machine, so I'll just pull the hard drive, recover my data, and move on.

Any thoughts??

TIA

 

Did you previously get both monitors running during the startup screens? Otherwise, if the second monitor started running during Windows loading, it could be a drivers/software problem.

Why don't you suspect a problem with the graphics adapter?

If you don't have many other options you can try anything you like.

You can go into the BIOS and set it to Defaults.

Have you tried "Clearing the CMOS "? Changing the battery can clear the CMOS, but you need to let all the power drain from the motherboard and as confirmation, when you start up, the date will revert to that when the system was manufactured.

Something might be "stealing" the IRQ allocations for the card. Try looking up IRQ or "conflict" in Windows Help and Support, but basic IRQ allocations are made in the BIOS, hint: have you connected any new hardware? I would be hesitant to try running a system you describe for fear of coming across such conflicts. ) You might have been lucky to have had it running before.)

Matt