Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

[sdog]

Once my machine boots up into Windows, the graphics card works beautifully, no problems, no conflicts, beautiful display.

However, until it gets there (i.e. during POST), the display is extremely dark and semi-unreadable. I can see the little "energy star" logo in the top right corner and the row of very dimly displayed action key indicators ("DEL" etc.) along the bottom. All of the scrolling POST text is non-existent (I presume it's really black-on-black, not non-existent, but I can't see it any more, so hey, how would I know?...). If I press DEL to go into the BIOS, I can see some of the BIOS text (very dark/dim), but not all. Some (like the help text) is black-on-black or non-existent. Makes it a pain to change any BIOS settings.

It all worked fine for a while when I first assembled the machine, but at some point it started doing this and has been for a very long time. I just haven't had time or inclination until now to try to research the answer, since I don't often dink around in the BIOS. Has anyone seen this before or have any ideas about where I might start looking to find the cause?

MOBO=Gigabyte GA-EP35C-DS3R - BIOS=F4 - Drivers=latest as of 2010-04-12

Graphics=Gigabyte GV-NX86T256H - BIOS - not completely sure - for some reason F21 is sticking in my head, but I can't recall where the display BIOS is reported in order to confirm. - Drivers=NVidia 197.45

Monitor = Micron 900LX SVGA CRT (think this is actually made by Panasonic ) connected to GV-NX86T256H through DVI-VGA adapter.

OS=WinXP SP3

Thanks in advance for any ideas you might have.

[warren300]

Re: Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

try updating the intel/inf chipset drivers from gigabyte website,is f4 the latest bios for mb? if not try updating to latest one

[PhenomII Dude]

Re: Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

get a digital screen and the problem goes away

what makes you buy a digital ports graphics card when you have an analogue monitor?

[sdog]

Re: Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

Thanks Warren, Yes F4 is the latest BIOS posted on the Gigabyte website (unless I'm missing something). And the MOBO chipset drivers I downloaded and installed are also the latest from the Gigabyte website (unless I'm missing something).

PhenomII Dude - Dang!! I wish I could afford "new hardware" as my first tactic in troubleshooting computer problems. But until I start to see money flowing out of my ...orifices... I'll need to continue to upgrade my hardware a little bit at a time, like for example: buying a graphics card with digital output that is supposed to be backward compatible with an analog monitor through a VGA adapter (Hmmm, sounds like the 8600).

Anyway, I'm finding it hard to understand how it can be a hardware problem since monitor, MOBO, and graphics card all perform perfectly... once Windows loads. But I truly don't understand exactly how these three pieces communicate with each other during the POST process, so maybe different parts of the hardware (on the MOBO? on the graphics card? in the monitor?) are being used during POST than when up and running? I was hoping someone might understand well enough how this interaction takes place to shed some light.

[warren300]

Re: Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

im using the very same dvi to vga adaptor it shouldnt cause the screen to pixellate,its something to do with the bios because when it loads windows os and the drivers for gpu theres no pixellation

[sdog]

Re: Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

Thanks Warren,

I kind of suspected some combination of BIOS/Drivers. I could go backwards with the MOBO BIOS, but I'm a bit hesitant because I think I updated to the latest BIOS to fix some other issue (It's been a while or I'd sound more definite - dang I guess I ought to just address every problem when it comes up!).

Any gut instinct or educated guess as to whether the problem would more likely be caused by MOBO BIOS, Graphics BIOS, MOBO drivers or Graphics drivers? Or is it pretty much a crap shoot? If I understand the process correctly, it seems like drivers wouldn't affect anything during POST, only once the OS has loaded. True? Or do the drivers, once loaded, wind up storing stuff in some onboard memory on the MOBO or graphics card, that then affects a later boot?

Just thinking out loud. I'd like to narrow the likely possibilities as much as possible before I spend a day thrashing and swapping out combinations of BIOS (and likely breaking one thing to fix another).

Thanks

[warren300]

Re: Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

if its only doing it in the bios before anything of windows get loaded then its most likely mb bios could be gpu bios but i cant say for sure,have you set any bios for an overclock? if not try loading optimized defualts in bios and save/exit....make a not of any overclock settings before you do this as it will wipe it clean

[sdog]

Re: Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

Excellent. Thanks Warren. May be a few days before I can try it, but I'll give this a shot.

[warren300]

Re: Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

have you looked for an up to date gpu bios??? will it let you flash it?

download and save/run this it will tell you your gpu bios

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1788/mirrors.php

[sdog]

Re: Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

Very cool tool! I was wondering how to identify my GPU BIOS!

It looks like I'm running GPU BIOS version 60.84.5E.00.00

Here are the options on GB's website, using their super intuitive version numbering scheme:

file version F21 - dated 2007/08/17 - BIOS version 60.84.5E.00
file version F2 - dated 2007/07/09 - BIOS version 60.84.5E.00.00
file version F20 - dated 2007/07/09 - BIOS version 60.84.5E.00

This version numbering system leaves me baffled as to which file I should actually be using. If I just look at the date and don't try to make any sense of the version numbering, it appears maybe F21 is the latest.

Sure seems like this might be worth a try. (I'll probably take a shot at the MB's "optimized defaults" first).

[warren300]

Re: Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

file version F21 - dated 2007/08/17 - BIOS version 60.84.5E.00

^^ that is the latest which seems to be the same one as you have so i wouldnt flash if i were you as its risky even more with gpu than mb,

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

The problem is likely your VGA BIOS profiles are missing or incorrect 2D clocks.

Sorry I am not sure how to check this with Nvidia, only ATI. Hopefully one of our Nvidia guys here can tell you how to look at all your VGA BIOS profiles

[PhenomII Dude]

Re: Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

since it all worked fine for him for a while - my bet it's the monitor!

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

Ahh Ok, ya it very well could be.

Hopefully he has another monitor he can test with to see.

[sdog]

Re: Graphics Card works great, but not during POST!

O.K. Here's the latest:

1. Warren300 - Optimized BIOS Defaults - didn't help, but no worse.

2. Warren300 - Tried flashing GPU BIOS to F21 (think it was at F2). Flash utility didn't like this BIOS/Board combination, so I flashed back to F2. - didn't help, but no worse.

3. Lsdmeasap - Sounds really promising. I'll research this a bit and see if I can learn anything.

4. PhenomII Dude - Found a little 15" VGA CRT. Plugged it in. Works perfectly, during POST and after OS load, so you may be right about the problem being in the monitor, BUT, BUT, BUT... WHY DOES IT LOOK SO DANG GOOD ON THE FIRST MONITOR ONCE THE OS DRIVERS LOAD??

I'm not questioning your conclusion - just trying to understand it. Does the MOBO+GPU talk to a different part of the monitor during POST than it does after the OS loads? I really don't know a lot about VGA. I just thought analog monitors were mostly voltage, current, resistance, etc. and not so much logic - with the logic happening in the GPU+MOBO. May be a bad presumption? I know it won't help me solve the problem if it's just a bad monitor, but if you have a second, I'd love to hear how the monitor can be bad during POST and good after OS-load. Just for my own education. If not, thanks anyway (to all of you) for all your help so far!