motherboard issue

I have an HP Envy h8-1414 PC. If I leave the system running all night, not being used, the system locks up with a blank screen. When I reboot the system I get nothing, no video, no keyboard flash, no beeps. If I remove the video card and put it back in, no change. If I remove and replace the video card, the system works. Both video cards work without a problem, but I am getting tired of swapping them our. Any ideas out there of what's happening or how to test further?

 

There are two things you should try first. Manually set the bios settings so the video card is the default display device, enter bios by hitting Del as the computer is booting and disable onboard video, set pci-e as first display device.

The second is a cmos reset which will reset all bios settings to stock or auto, do this with the video card in and hopefully it will be detected automatically.

To perform a cmos reset disconnect the power, find the small coin shaped battery and the motherboard and remove for 10 seconds, replace, reconnect the power and try to boot.

Your video card problem sounds like a secondary problem related to a hard shutdown, does this problem happen if you shutdown normally?

It can be really tough to work out the problem unless it can be consistently repeated. If it only happens during long periods 'especially overnight' when the computer isn't stressed I would suspect a power problem, make sure you have a surge protector, make sure there are no other electrical devices connected to the same outlet as your pc and if you experience lots of blackouts and brownouts in your region you should consider a UPS.

As standard check all your fans are spinning, clean out all your heatsink and fan assemblies, disable all power saving features in windows.

Post your operating system.

 

First thing, the system has no built in video. Second, I turned off all of the power savings options and that seems to have take care of the issue. What does this suggest to you?

 

Sorry for the late reply.

It suggests there's a problem with the windows shutdown procedure, usually a piece of hardware or software that doesn't want to be turned off. Start up all the software you run overnight EVERYTHING then experiment putting the the computer on standby,waking it up and shutting it down, do the same with the monitor and hard drive, set them to turn off after a minute then wake them up again with the keyboard or mouse.

Go to Control panel/admin tools/event viewer and look for an error from the time of the last hang and post the error description plus the code.

Go to C:Windows/minidump and look for any files inside the minidump folder from the time of the last hang, add them as an attachment or debug them yourself using the guide in the how to forum.

Post your windows version and what software your computer is running overnight.

 

Of course if you need your computer on overnight to run software you don't need any of the power saving features enabled other than monitor, if your happy with that no investigation needed.