***Skip the first paragraph if you don't want back-story.***
Yesterday my beloved Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 began artifact-ing and causing multiple BSODs. I checked the core temp, it was a balmy 52 ' C which is normal, but I cleaned the case and cards of dust to be safe. Tried it again and it BSOD on me. I decided the card is probably dead or dieing and tested my computer with a hilariously outdated Imagine 128 II (a must have for Beatles fans). It works fine aside from burning my eyes with 16 colours. I spent a solid 25 minutes screaming at my computer as I attempted to use Microsoft's SDK to read the .dmp dump files from the blue screens of death and then opted to to use Nirsoft's BlueScreenView. Turns out it was the graphics card and related kernel /.dll things that were causing the BSOD.
Today I've gone and taken back my nVidia Geforce 8600 GT from my younger sibling from a computer I gave him as a present. I *thought* I could do this easily enough because his motherboard is an HP MCP61PM-HM which has a built in nVidia GPU and he is not that big of a gamer. He was using an LG TV for a monitor (DVI-D to HDMI). I removed the 8600 GT, and booted up. Everything was fine for the time being, just poor resolution. I left the room to look for an adapter for him (because I had to switch to VGA-VGA but wanted to try VGA-DVI-HDMI), when I came back the TV was touting a "Invalid Format" message because he changed the display properties ("what the **** did you do?").
The issue is now that his computer will not give a usable video signal. It's connected VGA-VGA from the on-board to the TV's PC input.
The bizarre thing is that it was working, he changed the settings, and all of the sudden nothing worked. I changed the display settings to 600x800 when I re-installed the 8600GT and the TV and monitor would still not accept it.
Here is the following list of things I attempted to get his TV, and a monitor I brought, to work with the computer:
- Change TV settings, didn't work.
- Boot in Safe Mode / VGA mode, didn't work (BIOS screen and XP loading screen come up but as soon as the log in screen shows up it goes "out of range").
- Change BIOS setting from On Board to PCI / PCI-e, didn't work.
- Used the Imagine 128 II, didn't work.
- Reinstalled the 8600 GT, installed the old drivers for the on-board, powered down, removed the 8600 GT, restarted, didn't work. Tried the card plug, the on-board plug, both give the "Analogue out of Range" message on the monitor.
I don't know what to do. Poor kid has no computer now, the main floor is having the floor redone, he's stuck in his room with nothing to do.
I'm also worried the drivers didn't install correctly because I couldn't see them installing when it restarted, because I removed the 8600GT. Probably not the right way to do it I'm thinking now.
Please help.
***edit: I now realize VGA-HDMI passive connection is impossible.
