Need to ask Matrox RTX100 owners ...
 

It seems that after I've installed my Matrox card, I won't be able to see the bios loading up on my CRT monitor, until windows actually loads.

Is this normal or am I having hardware conflicts ?? ??? ???

How will I ever see any bios conflict error msgs then ?

system specs :

P4 3Ghz
1 G Ram
Abit IC7-G motherboard
3 X SATA Hitachi Hdd (not in raid)
Sapphire ATI Radeon 9600XT
Matrox RTX100
TDK 8 x DL DVD writer
Sony 3.5" Floppy.
Phillips 109S4 CRT monitor. (VGS not DVI)

Thank you for your valued replies in advance ...

What you can do in this case is go to the bios and enable "Halt on all errors" the system will then halt if there are any errors during post.

Hope this helps.

<<<-- Originally posted by Elie Zakaria : What you can do in this case is go to the bios and enable "Halt on all errors" the system will then halt if there are any errors during post.

Hope this helps. -->>

Thanks for replying.

But doesn't that mean that if there are errors loading up, it will halt and stop ? I definitely won't be able to see bios since that's my problem - I get no video signal input into the CRT when the system powers up. I only get to see anything when windows loads and the CRT reads an input signal and switches on from sleep mode

Hi Wesley,

Your monitor might have a long wake up time, if this is the case as soon as you turn your machine on, keep pressing DEL (It might be another key in your case) to enter the BIOS. That way once the monitor has had time to wake up the BIOS should be loaded.

The Bios can not simply dissappear...

Have you tried another monitor?
Possibly take out the Matrox card if you think it is giving you this problem, and then see if it boots normally?

Thanks,

Yes that's whay I meant.

If I were to remove the RTX / or rather before I got the RTX, everything runs fine.

Now with it, the monitor only wakes up when Windows successfully loads.

Oh I see, ok... In the bios, change the primary display for example..

If it set to AGP change it to PCI

If it is set to PCI change it to AGP.

One way or the other will work for you, the reason why this occures is because the the RT.X100 has a built in video chip and it's a PCI card, so your PC thinks it can use it as a display card which is what it defaults to during boot up.

So go to the bios as indicated above and change the primary display to the oposite of what you have (I don't remember exactly but I think it should be PCI) and you should be fine.

Regards,
Elie