Video Problems with Pavilion 9350f

[ddebevec]

The HP Pavilion 9350f was purchased new a few years ago and it has served its purpose very well until recently. A few months ago the machine started to have problems finding the driver for the video card upon boot. I removed the video card in order to reseat it and now things seem to have worsened. Upon boot, there seems to be no video signal. The monitor remains blank, so I have no idea what is going on. All power seems to be fine, fans are spinning, green light on power supply glowing, lights on front of case are all on. There are no beeps from the internal speaker during POST. I tried another video card and got the same results. The unknown is with the test video card is that I don't know if it works. It was just dragged out of a desk drawer. These are the symptoms and observations that have been experienced so far. Any advice or further testing scenarios would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

David

Model: M9350F

Processor: Phenom X4 Quad Core 9850

Memory: 6 GB DDR

Hard Drive: 750 GB

m2n78-la "Viola" Motherboard

Nvidia 9800GT

DvD Burner

15 in 1 card reader and infrared receiver

Windows Vista 64bit

[Sailfind]

Hi,

Please follow the instructions given below and let me know if it doesnt work:

1. Perform a power drain on the comp (Remove all the cables including the power cable and press and hold the power button for around 20-30secs -this is drain out any static electricity).

2. Reseat the CMOS battery.

3. Please take out the memory modules (RAM) and the graphics card. Switch on the computer and see if the computer is beeping normally

(find the beep codes in this link:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07107&tmp_task=solveCategory&cc=ca&dlc=en&lc=...

Please let me know once you've done all this.

[ddebevec]

I did what you requested and I received one short beep and one long beep. Is this encouraging?

David

[Sailfind]

Yes it means your computer is recognising the absense of memory module/s. Please reseat the memory and graphics card and check if its working fine.

If its not then you may try to connect to the integrated graphics card. For that you have to reset the CMOS and to do that you have to

1. Perform a power drain.

2. Remove ur graphics card and CMOS battery.

3.Switch on your computer and switch it off.

4. Put the CMOS battery back and then switch on the computer with the monitor cable connected to the integrated adapter output.

[ddebevec]

After reassembling the machine, it did boot.  The nVIDIA GeForce 9800GT worked and I have video.  A problem arose when I tried to reboot the system.  The system reverted back to its original symptoms.  I reset the CMOS battery again and the system booted cleanly.  It looks like when I reboot without resetting  the CMOS battery, I do not get any disk activity.  I hope we're getting closer. Thank, David

[Sailfind]

Please change the CMOS battery, it may have run out.

[ddebevec]

I did. I checked the original battery and it was putting out about 2.2 volts. I replaced it with a new battery that checked out at 3.3 volts. I did this during the original reassembly of the system. I wasn't sure if this was a significant issue because it didn't affect the outcome. I still have the boot problem. David

[Sailfind]

Hi,

Please find this document and go to the end of the document to see if the jumper setting are correct.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01421635&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&lc=en&dlc=en...

[ddebevec]

I checked the jumpers and they are in the correct position. Outside of that, I found an old firmware update that seemed promising, sp40966 "Seagate SATA Hard Disk Drive Firmware update resolves an issue where the hard disk drive may become inoperable after a power-on". I tried to install it, but the system thinks it's already installed. Would it be worth a shot to uninstall it and reinstall it? If so how do I go about doing that? Any other ideas? David

[ddebevec]

Sailfind,

I've found that if I reinstall the latest BIOS, the system does reboot and actually recognizes all the hardware.  The only problem is once I reboot again,  we then go back to square one.  I also ran the Seagate diagnostic utility "Seatools" and it display the firmware update of HP26.  While I've been searching the net for possible solutions to this issue, I've ran across a boatload of people who seem to have experienced the same problem I have.  Unfortunately, I'm having trouble finding a common solution.  I've been toying with the idea of trying to install the seagate firmware update, but I'm concerned about turning the drive into a brick.  Have you had any luck with anything on this issue?

Let me know,

David