Weird Boot problem. No more BIOS splash screen.

mngerhold said:

If disconnecting the shell fixes your problem, who am I to argue? But I suspect there is something else wrong, as that should not be necessary. Perhaps the HDMI cable is faulty (using the shell connection improperly?). I found many references to problems people have had with HDMI grounding (mostly audio-related), and in most cases the cure was to ground at least one end - and I also found very stroing opinions on how many ends should be grounded (or rather, bonded to the 'box' the connection terminated at).

Well it IS grounded, but it's grounded by the HDMI connector on the vid card.
My problem was that the ground part of the HDMI connector was ALSO grounding on the bare metal of the case.

Ghot
Well done and thanks for the rep

It certainly seems as you say that the proper ground or data shield for the HDMI was overidden by the metal of the connector touching the I/O plate of the card

So, when I noticed (with LED flashlight), that the gold outside of the HDMI connector was touching the metal case part, I decided... to wiggle the HDMI connector so it was not longer touching. BOOM! The BIOS splash screen is back.

HDMI - High Definition Multimedia Interface tutorial - Lammert Bies

Macboatmaster said:

Ghot
Well done and thanks for the rep

It certainly seems as you say that the proper ground or data shield for the HDMI was overidden by the metal of the connector touching the I/O plate of the card

HDMI - High Definition Multimedia Interface tutorial - Lammert Bies

I spent 2 hours (4 coats, 30 min between coats), coating that HDMI connector with liquid rubber where it would touch the metal part of the case.
Then 6-7 hours waiting for it to completely dry, only to find out that I coated the wrong side of the HDMI connector.



So I removed the liquid rubber, and just used black electrical tape on the right side. LOL


Just tested it out, and it works fine. Took a whole minute to do.



@Barman58

@badrobot

@steve108

Ghot said:

I'm just gonna rubberize the top of the connector a bit.
Those bars are only 1/16" aluminum, might not be a good idea to grind on or remove one of them.


Just unhooked the HDMI cable. I'm gonna rubberize tonight, so it's dry by tomorrow.

1st coat is on. Looks like two coats may do it. This stuff is pretty thick.
Fortunately, I have a bunch of teeny artists brushes.

2nd coat is on, and that will definitely do it.

Well... I put a 3rd coat on, just cause it's Made in the U.S.A.

Any more coats and it won't fit into the video card anymore.

We used a donated brand new Vizio TV for our computer classes at the local Senior Center. I changed computers and things would no longer work. What I finally figured out was that the "new" HDMI cable (which was actually a pretty old one) didn't work.

For some reason, older HDMI cables don't always work on newer technology.

Wynona said:

We used a donated brand new Vizio TV for our computer classes at the local Senior Center. I changed computers and things would no longer work. What I finally figured out was that the "new" HDMI cable (which was actually a pretty old one) didn't work.

For some reason, older HDMI cables don't always work on newer technology.

Yeah... the HDMI cable has worked and now works fine. The problem was the old case.
See post #20

Ghot said:

Yeah... the HDMI cable has worked and now works fine. The problem was the old case.
See post #20

I saw that. Very strange one, to say the least. I'd never have figured that one out!

Wynona said:

I saw that. Very strange one, to say the least. I'd never have figured that one out!

The ONLY reason I did... was I had a text file in my Vid drivers folder.
I put it there to remind me that on Win 7 with some vid card or other, I had to unhook the HDMI cable before I updated the vid card driver. 12/13/2013 is the date on that text file.

Anyway, while troubleshooting this problem, I thought maybe it's the vid card driver, so I decided to update it.
It didn't help. So I decided to go back to the 442.74 driver, and I saw that text file, and figured... wth?

So I unhooked the HDMI cable and BOOM! I got the BIOS splash screen back.
A little more playing around, and it became apparent that the metal of the HDMI connector touching the case metal, was the cause.

So it was pretty much desperation and dumb luck.
Which probably solves more problems than we admit to.


Why it chose Saturday to wiggle that final thousandth of an inch to make contact with the case... who knows.
It could have been anything.




/edit

But all that is just me being polite. The truth is that my secret identity is... Ace Ventura: Comp Detective.

And if you believe that, there's this bridge I want to sell you.

Ghot said:

/edit

But all that is just me being polite. The truth is that my secret identity is... Ace Ventura: Comp Detective.

And if you believe that, there's this bridge I want to sell you.

Ummm, I already have one to get across the gully to my Ocean Front Property in Arizona.