Strange monitor behavior

[Walter R.]

Running Win Xp SP2. I replaced my 3 year old 17" LCD monitor with a new 19"
LCD monitor. My computer is 5 years old and uses a NVDIA TNT Model 64/64 Pro
video card.

The old 17" monitor worked fine. The new monitor exhibits a strange problem:
When the computer boots, the name of the video card shows up clearly on the
first screen. On the following screens, when the computer goes through the
self-check routines (B&W) the text is all scrambled, although it boots up
fine. It will let me in the bios if I click on del repeatedly. It will start
Windows in Safe Mode if I click on F8 repeatedly.

IOW, the computer works fine but the first several screens are full of
garbled text. The monitor works flawlessly when I connect it to my wife's
(equally old) computer. Therefore, the problem is not with the monitor but
with the way it interacts with my computer.

Is the problem in my BIOS or in the Windows System?

 

[JBrunelle]

If you know how to reset the BIOS in your motherboard, go for it,
otherwise I would think it is a driver issue. Try seeing if there are
specific drivers for your monitor, as the standard plug-and-play
drivers are not 100% compatible. If that does not help, see if there
are any nvidia updates that still support that card.

 

[GateKeeper]

Not an expert, but I would bet on the BIOS. There might be some kind of
option to determine which kind of display to initialize first. Mine does
(Award/Phoenix BIOS). I think (guessing here) that most BIOSes will have
an option to initialize in VGA mode, which ought to work with any
monitor. Once you get your computer booted, you might try looking for a
BIOS upgrade. Most kinds of BIOS can be flashed, which means you can do
the upgrade with a floppy disk. A 5-year-old computer should accept
floppies. The BIOS upgrade, if you can find one, might solve this problem.