Why in the world did my DVI quit working after I changed out my CPU?

Computer Forum Video Cards, Displays and TV Tuners
1

I’m playing around with a socket A Athlon XP system. I just downgraded my cpu from 2500+ to the 1800+ so that I could stick the 2500+ into another box instead. I pretty much kept everything else the same. I changed a few other things, but they shouldn’t affect anything. Here are the full details:

  1. I fully took out the motherboard from the case to facilitate the cpu transfer (A7N8X by ASUS)
  2. I took out the video card, dusted it off with compressed air can, and put it back in (it’s a Radeon 8500, 64mb)
  3. removed my sound card (permanently)
  4. took out my 3 memory sticks and put in 2 others of lower capacity
  5. disconnected floppy.

Now, after I put the 'puter all back together, I plug in the DVI cable from my monitor into the video card exactly as before, and it just tells me: “check signal cable”. And stays that way when I try booting. When I plug in the analog cable, it’s normal. WTH?

I never had this issue before; the DVI had always worked without a hitch as far as I remember. I switched the cpu before (upgraded from the 1800+ to the 2500+… now I reverted back to original setup) and there were no problems. What’s the matter now? Anyone have any ideas??

2

Have you tried pressing the ‘Source’ button on your monitor?

3

Lol. After reading your comment, I was about to try that… I was about to unplug vga and plug in dvi again, and thought, I will make sure to turn off the monitor first. So I did that, finished re-plugging as I was going to, switched the monitor back on expecting to try the source button… but the monitor just came on! And now it works.

D’oh I’m a dolt lol. Don’t remember exactly what steps I was doing before; maybe it doesn’t work switching the plugs on the fly?

4

It should be able to do so, but some monitors don’t agree with that I guess…

5

I’m pretty sure that the very first time what I did was:

  1. had the monitor, computer, everything turned off fully. I was ready to power up the pc after doing all that tinkering.
  2. I plugged the monitor directly into DVI port (still everything turned off)
  3. Then I pushed power button to turn on the monitor ('puter still off).
  4. Then it gave me the “check signal cable” or whatever
  5. Turning on the computer didn’t help – still no signal.

I don’t understand why that would give it trouble. But then it worked suddenly as I described. Doesn’t make sense…