half functional card?

[lan]

Hi, it's my first post here.

I've encountered a bizarre problem with my Mystique G200 AGP and I'm wondering if anybody has seen this before. Basically the card only seems to work inside Windows as a secondary card as the computer cannot go through POST on startup if it is the primary. It beeps as if there was no video card.

Now for a more detailed explanation. One day all was working fine until I was switching mobo into new case. I put the card back in and I get the BIOS beep codes which designate no video card. I reseated the AGP card, it still beeped. So I proceded to put a TNT2 into the computer and it POSTed fine. I put the G200 in the computer where the TNT2 came from and that beeped. I concluded that the G200 was dead.

I needed to get the computer w/ the G200 working again so I put in an old spare PCI card. #9 Imagine Series 2. Didn't I say old? I went into computers BIOS and changed the Primary Video from AGP to PCI. Windows booted just fine but I was surprise to see that the G200 was detected by the computer. I could actually use the G200 as a secondary display perfectly. Whoa....

So then I thought maybe the BIOS got whacked or something so I restored it to the original Matrox one. It still had same symptoms. So now I've ran out of ideas.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

[Maggi]

Welcome aboard !



Most MoBos offer a switch in their BIOS that let you determine which port to use a "primary display" adapter and usually that one is defaulted to "PCI first" or "PCI/AGP".
Set it to "AGP first" or "AGP/PCI" and see if you still got the problem.

Also, it would be helpful, if you posted as many system details as possible so that we can nail down the problem more easily.

[lan]

Yes, I've originally set the motherboards I tried troubleshooting on to use AGP for primary display. They were 2 Supermicro P6DBEs and a Abit BP6. The rest of the specs shouldn't matter much because I can pull the rest of the cards out and it still happens.

It's as if the "boot" or "text" portion of the card was dead!

[Kruzin]

Could be a failing BIOS on the card.
Go to Matrox's site, or MURC, and download the "Recover" utility. This will refresh the card's BIOS, and probably fix your problem.

http://www.murc.ws/cgi-bin/dl.cgi?site=20&dl=recover.zip

[lan]

A very strange turn of events. Basically the card works now after leaving the computer off for days! Weird.

I usually don't turn off my system but I'm in lower east side NYC. My phone already doesn't work. My cable system (and thus internet) turned off Thursday so I was like "screw this" and turned everything off. Luckily the cable is back. That's how I'm writing this message.

Anyhow, thanks for the ideas gentlemen.