Monitor no signal on installing new card

[LordLove]

Hi. A friend of mine recently bought a new graphics card for his computer and asked me to fit it for him yesterday...sadly there seems to be a problem. His origonal graphics card was an onboard Geforce 4 one that was actually part of the motherboard. The machine is from Time Computers though (a large retailer in britain), and they don't give very much documentation with their machines, so I can't give you exact specs on the make of the board.

Anyway, upon fitting the new card in the AGP slot, I plugged the monitor cable into the back and got a no signal message from the monitor (the pc turned on fine I assume). Just to test I plugged it into the motherboards monitor port too, but still got nada. Upon taking the card out again the PC worked fine...I assumed that the onboard graphics must have to be disabled in the BIOS or something before installing the new card, but on looking at the BIOS I can't see any such option.

I'm pretty sure there's an obvious solution to this that I've just missed...can anybody help? cheers.

[PrntRhd]

Are you certain you put the monitor to the video card and not the original onboard output?

[LordLove]

Yeah, I tried it in both to be absolutely sure.

[Sylvander]

Perhaps you need to "Force Update the ESCD"?
I don't know if AGP is an extension of the PCI Bus.
I believe that it may be necessary to "Force Update the ESCD" whenever the PCI hardware arrangement is altered.
This is to make sure that all the necessary resources are being allocated to the hardware at startup [so they can be initialised].
Study the configuration settings in the BIOS Setup, especially the Plug 'n Play detection and resource allocation.
See;
http://www.dewassoc.com/support/bios/escd.htm
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/res/pnpESCD-c.html

"I assumed that the onboard graphics must have to be disabled in the BIOS or something before installing the new card, but on looking at the BIOS I can't see any such option."
OUCH!
I distantly remember someone having a similar problem.
The solution was to go into the BIOS Setup...
Disable the on-board video, save and exit Setup...
Switch off the PC...
Fit the new card...
Switch the PC back on...
If it's necessary to "Force Update the ESCD", go immediately into the BIOS Setup and do that, then "Save & exit Setup".