Very strange problem: No video signal! falty hardware?

[Shadoware]

Recently I installed Liinux(Feren OS and Kde Neon too) to an old computer here just to learn a bit about Linux. After some hours the pc went to a minimum video quality and after that I can only boot the pc using "nomodeset" which is a minimal video support(like a safe mode in windows). If I boot the pc in normal configuration, while the pc is booting (I think when the video driver is loaded) the pc goes to no video signal and the monitor turns off.

At first I thought it was a operating system or video driver problem, and try many ways to solve it with no success. I thought it was a Linux problem so I installed windows 8.1, which this pc was using before, but the problem continue. I also thought it could be a vga card defect and so I change it with another old vga I have here but the problem continued.

I think its a motherboard problem. Do you think it could be some other thing else?

This old pc using Phenon II X4 965, DDR2 800, the mobo is asrock AM2nf6g-vsta with a HD 7850.

What is a good way to check the motherboard for defects?

 

[Mussels]

Is the problem that you have no video signal, until the OS loads?
If so, does it behave normally in windows from that point on?

I'm suspecting this may be a simple UEFI issue, they're quite common with the older systems that could be UEFI or BIOS

 

[Shadoware]

I only have video signal using nomodeset or safe mode, otherwise the video is turned off during boot and I dont know even if the boot process procedes or get stuck.
When I installed Win 8.1 the system booted normally but after I installed AMD drivers I lost video signal again. Because of that I thought it was a vga defect but its not.

Tell me more about this UEFI issue.

 

[Mussels]

I cant help at all with linux issues

The UEFI issue is where you'll get no image in the early stages of booting, usually staying blank until you hit the windows login screen

That's caused by having a GPT/UEFI installed OS and motherboard, but with a GPU that lacks UEFI support (or commonly here, GPU's like the RX580 with a broken BIOS that needs updating.)
This might be similar because that board is old and only has BIOS/MBR support, so a modern GPU with UEFI only could behave similar

I mean that motherboard has onboard graphics so just run dual monitors, so you can see error codes from the addon card, on the display from the IGP?

 

[Shadoware]

I cant help at all with linux issues

The UEFI issue is where you'll get no image in the early stages of booting, usually staying blank until you hit the windows login screen

That's caused by having a GPT/UEFI installed OS and motherboard, but with a GPU that lacks UEFI support (or commonly here, GPU's like the RX580 with a broken BIOS that needs updating.)
This might be similar because that board is old and only has BIOS/MBR support, so a modern GPU with UEFI only could behave similar

I mean that motherboard has onboard graphics so just run dual monitors, so you can see error codes from the addon card, on the display from the IGP?

I never tried to use 2 monitos with this system. Im not sure if I can enable both offboard and onboard gpu simultaneously but I will try that.

I didn't know that gpu also have to have support for UEFI. This could point me to some troubleshooting attempt. I think none of this hardware has UEFI support but the disk where Linux is installed is using a GPT partition scheme wich is most used to UEFI systems. The linux boot loader can work both with bios and UEFI and it allows me to use a GPT disk in a bios system.

Im imagining if the operating system "thinks" its in a UEFI system but in reality its in a bios system. The GPU's I tried are old so they surely only have bios support.

 

[Mussels]

UEFI support came in around the 600 series with Nvidia, but it was optional. Pretty sure they didn't all come with it til the 900 series.

All those cards work in both UEFI and BIOS systems, with the exceptions of rare glitches (Like how Zen+ wont work with Nvidia 600 and 700 series cards except at PCI-E 2.0)

Your onboard GPU will 100% work with a dedicated GPU installed and 100% support it's BIOS boot method but not UEFI, so its a good way to spot if it has the same problem as well

Try a spare HDD/SSD with a confirmed MBR install of an OS? Rufus can do that for 8/10, unsure about other OS