accessing bios screens

My computer came with integrated video, an ati radeon express 1150, which i recently replaced with a pci geforce fx 5200. Now that I plug the monitor into the new card, I no longer have the bios screens on boot-up. If I plug back into the original outlet, I have bios screens. Worried that at some future time when i have an ill pc and need to get into bios but can't because i forgot about this, I went looking in bios for a setting i could change. But I don't see one, at least one I would recognize. Is there a solution to this?

 

Can you enter bios by pressing a key like DEL? Your key may vary. I think what happens is the POST screens (both gpu & bios) goes too fast that you don't catch it. Try disabling boot screen graphics in bios if present.

 

Look in your BIOS for a setting like Init. Display First. Set that to your PCI card. Not sure where it is in your BIOS, poke around and post back if you can't find it.

E

 

Found the init display and made that change, but it had no effect.

Knowing that pressing f10 gets me to bios when the screen is present, I pressed it when that first screen should have displayed, but it only prevented windows from eventually booting up. Power off and on again got me windows.

The situation remains that i have to move my monitor cable from the pci card to the mobo socket to display those pesky bios screens.

 

Really painted myself into a corner now. My previous post was incorrect. I made a change in the init display, from pcie to pci, and could no longer get to bios on either video card. In my infinite wisdom I decided to go into the device manager and re-enable the mobo card, meaning that both were enabled. That straw broke the camels' back. Now I have a blank white screen when on the mobo video, and a blank black screen on the new card.

Screwed royally.

I tried to boot up on the repair cd but just got the blank screen again. I have a backup drive on this computer and physically switched the data cable to it, but still the blank screen. I have no more cards to play.

can anyone tell me how to pull my head out of my *ss?

 

You can try holding the CTRL key during boot, thats an overclockers trick to reset the graphics when they can't boot from pushing the clock to far but I don't know if it will effect the settings you changed.

You might also try getting back into windows thru safe mode (keep hitting F8 during boot) since safe mode loads with minimum drivers you might be able to get in and change things back. Look in your manuals for the proper way to disable onboard video to use a card.

I once had a pc that had an AGP card but in the bios if I changed it to AGP first, the pc would not start, so I put it back to pci and it started again, Go Figure! Later when I put a newer AGP card in I could change it to AGP first with no problems, so it was the old card. It was either a 5200 or 5700 I don't remember.

 

If what Appalian said to try does not work, try a manual CMOS clear. Turn 'puter off, unplug it from the wall power, and find that jumper... Should be close to the battery (battery looks like a coin). Move the jumper from 1&2 to pins 2 & 3 for a few secs, then put it back, and try to boot. Look for 3 pins, a plastic jumper, and the words CMOS.

E

 

Thank you both for the help. I now have video again.

After my last post it occurred to me that it was just a simple case of video card conflict, so removing the new card should fix that. I was very hopeful but it was no help, no change.

The keyboard tricks also made no change, but I'm very grateful for the suggestions.

The CMOS jumper change did the trick. The INIT Display setting returned to pcie ( the other two choices were pci and on chip vga ). The video was pretty shaky until I disabled the mobo video, but now the new pci type is working fine.

Did you hear my head pop?

 

Glad you got it fixed!

E

 

Now, back to my original post:

Is this a normal situation, with bios screens on the integrated video output only? Or are all computers and situations different? Is this a non-issue?

 

Personally, I'm not sure what your talking about when you say bios screens. When I start any number of computers I own (none with onboard video though) I don't get bios screens unless I hit the del key. I suppose what your saying is the del key doesn't get you into the bios if you use the external card. That would be weird and I have no clue what to tell you except contact the motherboard maker, there could be a fault in the board that could get worse over time.

 

Thats what I'm saying. With this computer, on power up, the first screen i get tells me to access settings at f10, boot menu at f9 etc. Hit f10 and you get bios. Now that I am on the pci card I don't get that primary screen and hitting f10 anyway does nothing but impede boot-up.