Can't get monitor to display until Windows fires up

veldthui · 07 Jun 2018

My older PC will not fire up the screen until I get to the login screen for windows.
This means I do not get to see the boot options or able to enter the BIOS. Once the screen is up I can shutdown and restart and the monitor gets fed fine and I see the boot options and able to enter the BIOS.
I recently installed ESXI 6.7 to try out on a swapable 2.5" drive and booting from power off I get no screen at all. Booting windows results in the screen and then shutdown and restart the ESXI I see the screen completely.

My BIOS was set to PCI as first device for the graphics. I have an nVidia 800 series card in the PCIe-16 slot so I changed the BIOS to this and it made no difference. There is two other settings selections in there with PCIe-16 slot 2 and can't remember the other one. I am sure the card is in slot 1 which is closest to the CPU.

Any suggestions as to how to get this going properly so it will display from cold boot?

CountMike · 09 Jun 2018

I see you already did right thing with BIOS but if it also has option to disable IGPU maybe you should try that. Some graphic cards also have a "preferred" output port so it may help to change monitor connection to another one if possible.
As far as that failed driver problem, boot to Safe mode and you'd be able to delete uninstall it from there. Most drivers either don't load or work in some other mode in Safe mode.

veldthui · 15 Jun 2018

Well at a complete loss. I tried all the BIOS settings I could find from PCI to PCIe-16 x 2 and PCIe-8 x 2 and none of them would fire up the display from a powered off cold boot. They all would display from a restart fine. I could even shut the computer down and then within 20 seconds press the power button and it would display fine. Off for more than that though and nothing.
It is not a driver issue as it is at BIOS level before the drivers even load up and the fact that it displays fine as soon as windows wants someone to login suggests something on the card is not being turned on.

I have update the computer BIOS to the latest version (failing a couple of beta versions) and no difference. Do that reset the BIOS back to defaults as well.

Guess I am just going to have to live with it. Not a problem with windows as it eventually comes up but ESXI will not display anything at all on the screen. Yes it is controlled by web page but I would like to be able to shut it down from the screen as it is a lab test machine so do make changes. Only work around so far is to boot with winodws, shut it down and then boot esxi which then gives me the screen.

The only outputs on the card are a DVI full output which is what is plugged in, 2 HDMI outputs, and a partial DVI output (does not have the 4 pins around the flat blade part).

CountMike · 15 Jun 2018

You can't individually control outputs from a dedicated GPU from BIOS, only which PCIe port to be default or IGPU being a default display. That's controlled by GPU's BIOS.
As for "Full or partial" DVI, it may help to know this: Whats The Difference Between DVI-I and DVI-D? - MonitorFanatic.com and What Is The Difference Between DVI-I And DVI-D? [Simple Answer]

veldthui · 18 Jun 2018

Yes, finally got it working. A finally found a DisplayPort cable at work that I could borrow. Put that on and disconneted the DVI-I cable. Selected the DP on the monitor and fired the machine up from cold. Displayed the BIOS POST screen as it should.
So of the 4 ports on the back of the card only the DP outputs something from cold boot. The other three need windows to initialize something and then they are okay.
And also on further examination the card was actually a Gigabyte 680GTX. I thought it was a 800 series card.