Issue: Cannot disable onboard graphics to enable PCIe video in BIOS Acer Veriton M4630G

chuckm441

I cannot find any way in the BIOS of my Acer Veriton M4630G to disable the onboard graphics and enable a PCIe card. The board has two PCIe x16 slots. The PC will start if I put a graphics card in, and the fan will run, but Windows 10 has no clue the card is installed.  All that shows in the Device Manager is the original Intel HD 4600 onboard graphics.  

Currently running Windows 10, and it shipped with Windows 7.  The BIOS "onboard graphics" is Enabled BUT is also grayed out so that it cannot be changed.  And in another section, the "Primary Graphics" is set to AUTO, but that is also grayed out so it can't be selected.  This remains the same in the BIOS even swapping out two different good graphics cards in the main PCIe x16 slot (one was an nVidia GeForce GT 730 card, and the other an AMD card).  Neither card requires extra power, and the fan runs on both.  But boot it up and connect the monitor to it (via DVI) and the LCD tries HDMI, VGA, and then DVI, but ends up reporting "no signal" with both cards.  Both of these work in other machines.  

One other issue I have noted - if I put one of the cards in the second PCIe x16 slot, leaving the main one empty, the PC will turn on, but will not put out any video from either the onboard graphics or the PCIe x16 source.  I'm assuming it never even starts to boot Windows with the card in this slot because Windows doesn't complain at all once the card is removed and it gets restarted.

Help!  Whoever can help with this will be greatly appreciated!

Addendum:

Below are the other BIOS versions for my PC listed on the site.  Can I (and should I) downgrade?

Here's the order the site lists them, from top to bottom:

P21.C1 dated 2019/09/24 (the one installed in my PC)

P11.B1 dated 2015/01/08

P21.B1 dated 2014/04/16

P21.B0 dated 2013/12/34

P11.B0L dated 2014/01/14

P11.B2 dated 2015/05/25

P11.C0L dated 2015/01/08

Thread was edited to add model name to the title

Leostat

When the card is installed, if you scan for new hardware in device manager is there anything under the unknown section? You shouldnt need to disable the onbaord for the graphics card to be detected in theory 🤔

chuckm441

Thanks Leo ... I did scan for changes, and no unknown devices showed up.  If it had, I would have downloaded the drivers and installed it.  Both cards are just invisible to Windows.  I'm going to hold off doing anything else for a few days, but I welcome further thoughts or comments.

billsey

On most of these Acer motherboards the BIOS does an identification of the PCIe devices during initialization. If it sees a GPU in the x16 slot it disables the onboard video and switches to the GPU instead. The issue arises when you get a machine like this that was done right at the cusp between Windows 7 and Windows 8. The Windows 7 versions use a Legacy BIOS that requires a MBR disk for booting, the Windows 8 versions use an UEFI BIOS with a GPT disk for booting. Most of the more modern GPU cards use the EFI boot to install some of their lowest level drivers before initializing the card to send graphics to your monitor. If you are setup with the Legacy system you will need to likely go a generation older for the card in order for it to work.

The difference (I believe) between the P11 and P21 BIOS versions on your system are the P11 are Legacy and the P21 are UEFI. Check in your BIOS to see if there's an option to switch to UEFI booting. If there is then make a good backup of your system and reinstall from scratch Windows 10, wiping the drive and converting to GPT before starting the install. Once you are up with a UEFI boot into Windows you can reinstall the card and it should work.

chuckm441

Thanks billsey, that is interesting info, expanding on to some of what JackE has said to me.  I checked and my current boot drive is MBR formatted.  Will reboot and check if there is a UEFI option in the BIOS.  Three of Acer's prior downloadable BIOS options specify "BIOS UEFI for Windows 8."  Do you know if I can downgrade the BIOS if UEFI booting is not an option in the current installed version?  And to be safe, I already planned to make a full image of my boot drive anyway.  But I have never tried imaging an MBR formatted drive and restoring it to a GPT formatted drive.  I will have to see if that's possible, or if the image carries the drive format properties (I hope not).  Acronis True Image 2021 is my current tool for that, if you're familiar with it.  And thank you for explaining how the issue came about during the switch from Legacy to UEFI, from Win 7 to Win 8 (MS's first attempt to foist Android and iOS style UI's on us).  The main card I'm trying to put in should already be a legacy card, the Nvidia GeForce GT 730 (PNY model).  It came with support for XP, Vista, 7, and 8, and the PNY info page on the card is dated 2014 (I bought it in 2015).  And I do have older yet cards available if I need to do that.

chuckm441

The BIOS does not have an option to switch to UEFI.  So my question is, can I "downgrade" to one of the UEFI enabled BIOS options, or is that a crash and burn? 

Commodore_1995#

Does your model's bios have the launch csm?

If so, just set it to NEVER.

chuckm441

Thank you Egy ... I had already tried that, and after setting it to "never," it no longer sees any connected drives.  The boot SSD drive disappears, the data HDD's do not show up, and even the DVD does not show up.  It just asks for a boot device because it doesn't "see" any.  Bummer!

chuckm441

So the question remains ... can I safely downgrade the BIOS to a UEFI-enabled version?

Commodore_1995#

Initialization does not take place, because the ssd is converted to mbr. I suggest you disable lauch csm to activate uefi mode and reinstall windows, converting ssd to gpt.

billsey

I wouldn't try to upgrade the BIOS to an UEFI version. They state the UEFI versions are not for upgrades for a reason, my guess is those run a much higher risk of bricking the MB... The non UEFI configuration just means you won't be able to use the newer GPUs. If you really need better performance than the stock GPU card gives you it'd be better to perform a full upgrade to a newer machine. Yours is old enough now that a new machine will be like night and day.

chuckm441

Thank you, billsey. So why did they even offer UEFI BIOS for Windows 8?  Or is it that some of these shipped with Windows 8 and UEFI BIOS already installed?  This one came with Windows 7.  Anyway, as you recommended, I decided to play it cautious on installing the Vista UEFI BIOS, and I'm glad I did.  Better not to have to throw another PC together and move all my stuff over there.  More work than I have time for now.  

And installing that video card doesn't matter to me anymore:  I gave up ... and for a good reason.  I checked out the Passmark ranking on the GT 730 vs. the built-in Intel HD 4600.  The 3D mark of the GT 730 is higher, yes, but not by a "wow" factor ... only 802 vs. 627 for the Intel.  And the Intel beats it in 2D ... 315 vs. 229 for the GT 730.  And since I am not playing 3D games or doing any 3D graphics work, I don't need 3D performance.  But the gain (or loss) in 2D is big, so I would suffer overall graphics performance loss in the programs I do use by adding the card.

But one thing I learned helped me with my boot drive, so my thanks to everyone!  I had my 500 GB boot SSD drive suddenly fail to load Windows in this PC about two months ago.  Yet it works fine as a data drive (internal or USB).  So I switched that to an older 128 GB spare SSD drive I had lying around and that worked fine as a boot drive.  

But in the attempt to add the video card, playing with toggling CSM on and CSM off in the BIOS showed me that the drives would disappear if CSM was off, but come back when turned on and rebooted.  So I cloned the 128 GB SSD to the 500 GB SSD and it showed up and booted Windows.  So then I mounted it back into the PC and viola!  It went missing again.  Oh no!  I was SMH.  So switched CSM off again, rebooted, turned it back on, rebooted, and the drive was still missing.  Set all the BIOS values to default, and the drive remained missing.  Then I switched the SATA cables so the drive was moved from SATA 0 to SATA 2, and it was still missing.  So I did the CSM toggle off and on trick again, and this time the drive was back and Windows booted.  Everything was good now, repeatedly.  And I have no idea why SATA 0 will not recognize the drive properly, but it performs well on SATA 2.  So in the end all is well on the 500 GB SSD boot drive front, leaving me plenty of room to install all my data recovery programs, partition managers, video editors, Dragon Naturally Speaking, etc., etc. Yay!

Good day, and God bless to all!

billsey

Yup, the later versions shipped with W8 and UEFI. It's kind of amazing how a lot of the built in GPUs out perform older discrete GPUs. We often get questions here from people wanting to 'upgrade' to a slower card.

Daniel12138

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/637073/issue-cannot-disable-onboard-graphics-to-enable-pcie-video-in-bios-acer-veriton-m4630g

hi, i happen to have the opposite situation, i want to remove the GTX750ti from this system (VM4630G) and output from HD4400 (by i3 4150), however when i switched to the ports on the mainbord (DPs and VGA), nothing was outputed, the screen says "no signal", then i looked into the BIOS and found that the "onboard graphics" is disabled and grayed out, "primary graphics" is also auto and grayed out. the current BIOS version is P21B4 2014/07/31, i tried to upgrade to P21C1 but the error "BIOS is write-protected" occured although i disabled it as well as security boot in the BIOS. if i set the launch csm to never, the boot device will not be recognized. do you have any ideas of how to change the setting options and how to upgrade the BIOS? thank you in advance!

Daniel12138

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1141269#Comment_1141269

its interesting that it worked when i remove both 750ti and the onboard battery, then install the battery only after 10min, the bios was of course reset then the onboard graphics was turned to enabled but still grayed out. unfortunately this only works for vga port and cable, not for vga-hdmi or dp-hdmi since the mainboard doesnt have hdmi port

billsey

When the discrete GPU is physically installed in the system, the onboard graphics are automatically disabled during the power on sequence. When that GPU is removed the onboard graphics are automatically enabled. You can use one or the other, but changing requires the hardware change.