[jgv007]

Hi all, I was trying to replace an old video card in a Dell precision 390 which was used as a server. I purchased a, Diablo Tek ATI rage xl video card, 8mb, sdram, pci card. I brought the old video card that was in the machine to the store with me and the salesman told me I could use this new video card in any of the vacant PCI slots and that is what I did. Once I powered up everything, the PC booted & I the monitor displayed the boot process, I had a mouse & keyboard plugged in. It booted to win xp desktop and I was reviewing the the specs of the PC, and after 15 minutes, everything just stopped, the mouse quit working, then the monitor blacked out. I don't understand what happened? any thoughts would be appreciated. By the way, when I unplugged the monitor from the PC, it lit up and showed that there was no input from the PC, the minuted I plugged the monitor back in, it blacked out again. Could I possibly have gotten a new "defective" video card or is there something I did that damaged the new video card? I'll be waiting for some help on this, thanks, Jerry

[mjd420nova]

Yes, it is possible that you got a defective card. If you still have the old one, try putting it back in trying it. If that doesn't solve the problem, then you may have a power supply fault in the slot you tried or the motherboard. When you cold boot the unit do you get any BEEP's? If it does restart again with the old card, it is a faulty new card. If it cold boots with the new card then it would point to a heat problem. Only an 8MB card would have been very cheap, I don't think I have one that small in my spare parts box, The smallest I have is a 64MB one I use for troubleshooting.

[jgv007]

I can't put back the old video card because it was defective to begin with. When I installed the new card I had 3 PCI slots to choose from, so I selected one at random. The fact that the new card worked fine for 15 minutes does bring up many issues, like heat issues. I do agree that the new card is cheap but at the time I didn't want to spend too much money on a new card to see if maybe the problem of "no video" was being caused by a defective motherboard or some other reason. I don't profess to be a PC expert in these matters and I was just trying to fix the problem on my own. I just wonder whether I caused the new card to go bad by plugging it in to a defective motherboard? as far as whether there were any beeps when I did a cold boot, I'll have to get back to you on that. And thanks for trying to help.

Jerry

[smax013]

You could also try booting into Safe Mode. It will use a generic video driver rather than a device specific one if I recall correctly. It could be a driver issue if you have not removed the old driver and installed the new one.

[coastie65]

Hi, When you removed the old card, did you completely uninstall and remove the drivers from the old card before installing the new card ? This must be done, as well as disabling any onboard graphics chipset that may be present, before installing a new Video Card. coastie65

[jgv007]

no, I didn't uninstall the drivers of the old video card and really couldn't because the old video card did not work and I had no choice but install the new video card and although the PC booted up with the new video card at first, it only lasted 15 minutes before the PC stopped working. Within that 15 minutes, I should have looked at uninstalling the old drivers from the original video card. Today, I changed out the first new video card for another new video card and installed the 2nd new card and the PC did not boot at all, no beeps, all fans were running, no lights on keyboard & monitor was black. I'm beginning to think that that there may be a problem with either the power supply or the motherboard is bad? Would appreciate any ideas on this matter.

Thanks, Jerry

[GoneFishing]

sorry guy things are looking grim, if the fans don't fire up big bad, PS, MB, Mem doesn't matter at that point, I hope the problem is limited to the MB, you can probably reuse the CPU, Mem, CD, HDD, PS, and case, I am assuming that there is no smell of burned/burning electronics

[jgv007]

actually, all the fans are running when I hit the power button for the boot. At this point I don't know how to trouble-shoot whether the problem is the power supply or the mobo? It's strange that the PC booted that one time for 15 minutes before it quit?

[okleftovers]

motherboard would be 1st. guess, because your fans are still working. The power supply usually will not work at all if it is power supply.