hi all @ dal
i have just upgraded my pc and a mate in work had an old packard bell pc that needed upgrading urgently as he had a 4 gig hd and 32 meg ram not sure what board it has but it was made in 1998 and has built in graffix. so i thought i would do him a favour and put my old kt3 ultra/amd athlon cpu/40gig hd and 256 ram in a new case and use his cd rom/floppy and power pack to make him a half decent pc to get rid of my old stuff ? i stripped everything out rebuilt it and tried to start but the monitor says no signal ? the next day i got his monitor and tried but it still says the same thing but all fans and lights come on just no monitor... so after 2 days playing with everything i decided to put it all back to his original pc and guess what ? it still says no signal. now i have tried his monitor in my pc and it works. now i might be in trouble because i cant get a monitor to work to do anything to fix any problems if you know what i mean ?? any help before i have to buy me mate another pc would be appreciated. p.s all my other stuff worked fine the only differance is a graffix card but why didnt it work when back to his onboard graffix

have you tried a different graphics card? and is everything plugged in correctly?

hi mike
i tried a spare card but not sure if it work's thats why i put his main board back in which has a built in graffix. the only other card i got is a 3dfx voodoo 4 which i use in my own pc and i am a bit reluctent to try in case i mess this one up ? i will try all connecters again but as before all fans and lights work when started and hd kicks in its just that i cannot get a signal to the monitor (mine or his). i also cleared the cmos with the jumpers but to no avail thanx for a quick reply mike i am going away to snowdonia for the weekend but will keep you posted on any progress

Onebadass,

The video signal is probably there somewhere inside the system but it's either not reaching the graphics card or it's not getting through the graphics card and out the back to the monitor.

My top tip for troubleshooting new builds that don't work is to go right back to basics. Unplug / remove everything. Then re-fit the motherboard, processor, one memory module and the graphics card. No drives, sound cards, modems, etc. Then see if it starts up. If it does, plug in each additional bit of hardware, one by one to check for compatibility.

Also make sure that the motherboard is not shorting out anywhere, i.e. bits of metal touching where they shouldn't be. Ideally, you should have non-metallic washers between the motherboard and the nuts that the small motherboard bolts are screwed into.

Also, you should always take precautions against static electricity. If you don't know what those precautions are, you need to ask. Static can kill off almost anything inside a PC if it builds up enough.

Finally, it looks like you've tried swapping lots of components between different components, which I have no doubt has taken you quite a long time already. If your Voodoo 4 card is compatible with the motherboard, then I would chuck that in. It's very unlikely that any damage could be done to the card (assuming that you take precautions against static). Also check that the BIOS is set to use the PCI/AGP slot for the graphics output and not any on-board graphics chip.

Let us know if any of that helps

thanks again
i will try again monday as i am away. the only problem is how do i check my bios is for voodoo if i cannot get into it to check or change any settings ?

That's a very good question! Fortunately, as you've cleared the BIOS, it has gone back to 'factory default' settings, where all that kind of stuff is usually set to 'Auto' if there's more than one option.