Help Please!

[gamerguy99]

ok we just destroyed my friends computer, like we cant get antthing to come up on the screen, we tried to install a video card in it and after that we cant get the monitor to respond. its not the monitor, because we tried it on a different computer, what could be wrong with it? Im sorry if i posted this in thewrong forum, but any help would be greatly appreciated ^_^

[Cevinzol]

What kind of cards are we talking here?

Is this a video card upgrade?
If so, did the old one work? Have you tried putting it back in?

If the old one works try re-installing the new card. (maybe it wasn't seated properly)
If the old card doesn't work now either, then there's a possibility that you damaged the M/B. Either the socket (physical damage) or a chip (static discharge - you were grounded right?)
You can risk putting the new card in another machine but it may be the cause of the first failure and trash the second M/B also.

Then again it could just be a bad vid card out of the box.
More info could help us narrow it down.

[gamerguy99]

well it was an older ATI radeon 8500, AGP, we were grounding, the motherboard was an MSI socket 478.

[meticoeus]

Did the mobo have a video card before? Does it have on-board? Or is this just a fresh build?

If you can get access to a regular pci video card you can try it to see if the mobo still works or not.

For future reference, a thread like this probably best fits in the Video forum in the Workbench.

[Luke122]

I know this may sound dumb.. .
You didnt unplug or plug in a card while the computer was running did you?

:D Ok, just checking. I've seen it happen.


I agree with the suggestions above, try a known working card in the system, or just putting the old card back in. Do you get any kind of video flash at all? Does the system post (beep)?

If you are adding a card to a system that was previously using onboard video, you may have to change a setting in the bios to either disable onboard video, or use the PCI/AGP (whichever one you added) video on startup.

If you were using onboard video before, plug the monitor into that and see if you get anything. If so, check the bios.

One last thought..I would also reseat the ram as well. Just in case.