Random "System failed VGA test" errors when booting up

My A8N-SLI Deluxe is acting a bit funny. Every time I turn on the computer after being shut down, it won't POST and the POST reporter gives the following message: "System failed VGA test". If I reset the computer, it sometimes boots up fine. Sometimes it takes 2-3 reboots, or I must turn off the PSU switch and unplug the power cord. Once booted to Windows, everything seems perfectly fine.

I didn't get these messages when I first put the system together, so this worries me. Has anyone else encountered a strange, non-repeatable boot-up error with this board?

That's like the problem I had with a Soyo motherboard, it randomly would ***** about the video card not being seated properly then after pressing the reset button or cycling the power, it would be fine. Low temperatures seemed to trigger the problem. This happened one morning in 2002 when the room temperature was only approximately 40F degrees, because I had the fan in the window all night long. LOL.
Afterwards, when I entered the BIOS setup, it said 39F! That was when I wasn't OC'ing and had standard air cooling.
That was with a Soyo SY-K7VTA-B motherboard and T-bird 900 mhz.

Was the room temperature low when this symptom occured?

RJARRRPCGP said:

That's like the problem I had with a Soyo motherboard, it randomly would ***** about the video card not being seated properly then after pressing the reset button or cycling the power, it would be fine. Low temperatures seemed to trigger the problem. This happened one morning in 2002 when the room temperature was only approximately 40F degrees, because I had the fan in the window all night long. LOL.
Afterwards, when I entered the BIOS setup, it said 39F! That was when I wasn't OC'ing and had standard air cooling.
That was with a Soyo SY-K7VTA-B motherboard and T-bird 900 mhz.

Was the room temperature low when this symptom occured?

Click to expand...

Hmmm, well it IS cool in the room... probably around 62 F, but this happens even when I shut the computer down after it has been running for many hours and immediately start it back up. I seem to get the "VGA error" on EVERY start-up now, but upon reboot it usually doesn't throw the error. Very strange. It's just annoying to have a nice mobo like this acting so flaky. At this point I don't think it's worth the trouble of RMAing. My fear is that eventually the computer will never get past this error.

KillrBuckeye said:

Hmmm, well it IS cool in the room... probably around 62 F, but this happens even when I shut the computer down after it has been running for many hours and immediately start it back up. I seem to get the "VGA error" on EVERY start-up now, but upon reboot it usually doesn't throw the error. Very strange. It's just annoying to have a nice mobo like this acting so flaky. At this point I don't think it's worth the trouble of RMAing. My fear is that eventually the computer will never get past this error.

Click to expand...

Possibly a bad video card. But I wouldn't worry about the video card being bad, unless you never get past that error message.

RJARRRPCGP said:

Possibly a bad video card. But I wouldn't worry about the video card being bad, unless you never get past that error message.

Click to expand...

I really hope it's not the video card. Too bad I don't have another PCI-e card to test to see if this is a mobo issue or a video card issue.

I have a long, outstanding issue regarding this topic. Here we go:

First, I had an A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo which ran great with my amd 3500+ and 6800 gt (PCI xpress). After a month or two, the computer would boot but would not show video, just black screen (each time I boot now, mobo gives one long beep). I figured this to be a faulty power supply, so I bought a new one. This was not the problem. I then replaced the A8N-SLI with the A8N5X mobo and the problem was not fixed either. I replaced the Ram... problem not fixed. So I sent the video card back to BFG. They sent me a new one... the problem was not fixed. At this point I realized that my video card was not activating upon cold boot. The fan on the card doesn't spin at all. If I leave my computer running like this for 10-20 minutes and restart it, the video card reacts and my comp will run perfectly fine all night until I turn it off again.

I have checked the 4 pin, ATX I believe it is, power connector and it is seated in the mobo. The other 4 pin connector is seated correctly in the video card as well. My PS is an Antec 520 Watt Tru Power which has plenty of juice to run all my components. I just can't figure out why my computer needs to "warm up" before my video card will react and turn on. Is it the ASUS PCI-Xpress slots that are bad? Keep in mind, this same scenario happened on both the A8N-SLI Deluxe and the A8N5X.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!