HP Pavilion XT983 Video Adapter

[GEH]

I have an HP Pavilion XT983 on which the onboard video adapter seems to have quit. It has no AGP slot so my first response was to try a PCI adapter. I did not want to spend $100.00 just to test it so I found a used one that we thought was good. When I plugged it in and attached the monitor nothing changed. The monitor does not seem to acknowledge that it is plugged in. (The led stays yellow instead of turning green.) I read in some other threads on this forum about disabling the onboard or AGP video adapter and initializing the PCI adapter in the BIOS. I haven't a clue how to do that without a display. Is that likely to be an issue? Any clues how to take care of it without having a display? Is it more likely I just have a bad used PCI video adapter?

[DonJ]

Hi GEH, Welcome to WinDrivers!

First off, you might to read up on what HP says about Adding a Video Card to an HP Pavilion. It has some good basic info there. The instructions seem to assume that you're able to use the onboard video to access Device Manager in order to disable the onboard video. Then it wants you to enter BIOS Setup and set everything back to Default in order to find the new PCI video card. So, I see your problem.

BIOS Setup Utility Information and Menu Options

Do you hear any beeps on power-up? Phoenix BIOS Beep Codes and Error Message Descriptions

The only other thing I could suggest is to see if there are any jumpers on the motherboard for Disable/Enable Onboard Video. I couldn't seem to find any info online about those jumpers.

Let us know how it all ends up...Good Luck!