Cascade Crew

'92 camaro boss

Alright, so I bought a Gateway (insert gateway jokes here) last year, well I had it for about 4 months, figured it was time for an upgrade from the Dell from 2003.

Well i have it tooked up to my tv and always noticed it took a while to boot up to show it on the screen (about a minute to 2) finally after 4 months it would turn on, fans would run, but nothing on the screen none of the trays would open or anything, i tried switching HDMI cables, slots. Nothing happened, so i called gateway, finally got around to shipping it about 3 weeks ago, got it back, works like a charm. but it still takes forever to boot up still.

so my questions are, is it normal for it to take a while to load up to the tv?
And also, Does switching out hard drives and replaceing the OS really make all the difference to fix it? or should i be expecting to have to send it back soon?

Xophertony

'92 camaro boss · Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 10:38 am Post subject:

is there any way to make it recognize my tv as the monitor? it does exactly what you said so no worry's there then.

as far as what they said they did, i got a paper back that said a new harddrive and reinstalling the os is all they did.

Xophertony · Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 10:44 am Post subject:

there must be, without knowing your setup i would not be able to help.

Al Hasse · Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 6:19 pm Post subject:

Silly question, but could part of the problem be with the TV itself? Refresh rate, resolution? I had one that didn't like input from my PC because of that.

'92 camaro boss · Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 12:16 am Post subject:

my bad for leaving that out, the tv's a Sony Bravia Z series tv, has the 120hz refresh rate. from what i gathered from the guys i talked to sony only made one better model at the time and that was the xbr.

as far as the computer goes. don't remember the exact model of the gateway, but it running on vista, has a amd phenom quad-core processor, and a ati radeon hd 4650 1024 mb video card. theres more to it but figured that's all the info that would be needed here, i know a little about computers, but not a whole lot. so what i wrote there was straight off the sticker on the side of the tower lol.

Dewey316 · Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 1:16 am Post subject:

My guess is that it has something to do with the HDMI output not activating until the video card driver starts up. Do you happen to have a monitor that you can hook up via the VGA or DVI outputs from the card? Or does your TV have a VGA input that you can try using instead of the HDMI?

91RSVert · Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 5:02 am Post subject:

I'm using a Sony tv on my home desktop. Didnt boot up any different, and I am connecting via the standard vga? port, not hdmi.

'92 camaro boss · Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 11:41 am Post subject:

I've got nothing else to hook it up to, and the tv doesn't have anything but a hdmi hook up.

now that you bring that up it does make sense tho.

91RSVert · Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 12:04 pm Post subject:

The 46" z4100 has vga input.

The 46" z5100 I'm not seeing one, but if I understand this correctly, 1 of the HDMI ports is specific for pc connection.

Xophertony · Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 12:33 pm Post subject:

my roomate had a custom built vista machine, on a sony bravia 53". his card utilized a DVI to HDMI adapter, his card had no native HDMI output, my guess is it's like john says, and like i said. the card does not recognize the TV until the driver loads in the OS.

if you need a monitor to test with i have a handful of old 1024x768 flat pannels lying around. i would just give you one. of course.. shipping... Sad