Changing PC video output with no signal

[thenumberthirteen]

Hi. My friend gave me his PC to fix as it's had a problem. As far as I can tell the onboard GPU has crapped out, and there is no video signal. It boots up ok, and if you connect speakers you can still hear the Windows start up sound. So I put in a spare PCIe GPU I had, but the thing is it doesn't automatically output through the new GPU (it may not have the right drivers?). The GPU works, but the trouble is I can't download any drivers or try and disable the broken onboard GPU in BIOS as there is no video signal, and so I'm blind.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[Zantos]

Any graphics card worth it's salt should automatically override the onboard providing it's better than the board's GPU. The cheap option would be to use your own GPU in his PC to try and override the onboard and change settings that way. The easy option would be to replace the board. Only annoyance there is that if the new board isn't compatible with the current board's drivers it might take a reinstall of the OS for it to work properly (I had that problem with my new board). Which means any data on the primary HDD or RAID is a little screwed.

There are several ways around this problem, none of them are easy though.

 

[zeonz]

have you tried resseting the CMOS?

clearing the BIOS memmory and putting the settings to default might cause the PC to take the other GPU instead.

are you sure the computer has enough power for the spare GPU?

 

[Zantos]

have you tried resseting the CMOS?

clearing the BIOS memmory and putting the settings to default might cause the PC to take the other GPU instead.

are you sure the computer has enough power for the spare GPU?

This suggestion is far better than mine. The internet can tell you how to do it.