[RESOLVED] Blank Screen for BIOS or Selected Boot Device

[GamerMax5]

Computer Specs:
Dell Dimension 2400
512 MB RAM
A lot of dust

I need to get into the system BIOS and possibly select from a boot device. However when I press the F2 key to enter the BIOS, the screen remains blank. The same thing happens with the boot device menu. The BIOS make no beeps. The system will boot normally into Windows and will work fine. I've reset the CMOS battery and swapped the CMOS battery and still no avail. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Lord Orwell]

with a little research, there seems to be an issue with bios a09. Some video cards are not recognized by it, and your screen will be completely blank until vista takes over. Are you seeing anything at all on boot? A post screen? or is it completely blank?

[Siddharth Rout]

What are the key options (like F1 or F2 etc...) that you get when the pc starts?

[Lord Orwell]

it's really strange. My dad actually has a similar issue in that the bios doesn't recognize his monitor and he doesn't have a display until windows is loaded. In his case though windows doesn't support it either without a downloaded driver. He seriously keeps an old 13 inch lying around for system reinstalls. And... It's a dell monitor that isn't recognized.

[GamerMax5]

And... It's a dell monitor that isn't recognized.

Imagine that.

As lame as this sounds, but at the time it wasn't, the VGA cable was faulty. Actually it was intermittent but with that computer, for some reason or another, it just didn't want to work for the BIOS settings. It was weird too because it wouldn't work for CD boot screens either. It was like anything that wasn't run by the OS wasn't going to be displayed on the monitor.

Thanks for your help guys.