Installed my new Graphics Card but screen goes blank after re-start! help please!

londonman81

Hi everyone!

My saga to have a DVI'd monitor continues.....

I got teh Sapphire 9250 Radeon card finally from EBuyer and it was delievered today.

I slotted the card into one of the spare PCI slots in my Dell Dimension 3000, connected up the DVI slot on the card to the DVI input port on the monitor using the DVI cable and then started up the machine.

The icons were all very very very big - and then I put the driver CD in.

It went through various installation stages taking around 10 minutes in total. Then it asked me if I wanted to restart for new changes to take effect which I did - so I clicked 'yes'.

The Dell Screen came up fine and so did the 'windows is loading' screen.

But then the monitor didn't go onto the desktop as usual - instead it went into standby mode , totally blank and I couldn't see anything!

I had to switch my machine off at the mains as I could not navigate my way around the desktop to shutdown.

Now I've taken the card out and reverted back ot the analogue connection as before.

But what's going wrong with the card when I switch on the machine?!

Its' very very very annoying to have had problem after problem with this!

Thanks!

L

Xtreme

Hey there

i would try teh following , assuming you are using a windows platform

when the pc boots up hold down F8 key , this will give you more options , choose safe mode
one this is tottaly loaded i think the deafult is 640x480 so everything is huge , set your screen resolution to its max in safe mode then restart your pc normally.

if it boots into windows, try ajusting yuor screen resolution to a higher one until the screen blacks out again , but i would check online to verify that you have the latest drivers for you vga card for the operating system you use


hope that helps

Regards
>X<

blinky

Xtreme's got the right idea, but it's normally the refresh rate when the monitor goes into standby (to protect itself from too high refresh rates).

Rex_Mundi

Sometimes when you install a new graphics card, you have to change the BIOS to PCI for the graphics rather than on board or AGP. It will tell the system which graphics card you are using.

londonman81

Rex_Mundi wrote:

Sometimes when you install a new graphics card, you have to change the BIOS to PCI for the graphics rather than on board or AGP. It will tell the system which graphics card you are using.

Thanks for the advice - I've still to try out all the suggestions made so far.

Any ideas as to how I change the BIOS setting to account for the new PCI card?

I've not played around with a BIOS before and really am not very comfident at going to a deep level of a computer.

Thanks!

L

Rex_Mundi

I found the following in a dell forum. It will tell you exactly the steps to take to switch to a new PCI card for your Dimension 3000.

Dimension V, L, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2350, 2400, 3000 (PCI video cards)

DISABLE THE ONBOARD VIDEO CARD IN THE DEVICE MANAGER -
* Right click the My Computer icon
* Click Properties
* Click the Hardware tab and/or the Device Manager button
* Open the Display Adaptors. You should see the Intel video card
* Double click the listing for Intel whatever
* At the bottom under "Device Usage", click the down arrow and change this to "Do not use this device, disable"
* Click OK- Apply- OK
* Close all boxes when done
* Click Start- Shutdown- Restart- OK or Click Start- Turn Off Computer- Restart

RESET THE BIOS TO DEFAULTS -
* At the blue Dell screen, press the F2 key
* The message, Entering Setup should appear
* When the System Setup screen appears, press the F9 key
* Press the Enter key to confirm that you would like to load the defaults
* Right arrow over to Advanced
* Down arrow to Peripheral Configuration [press Enter]
* Ensure that all USB listings are set to Enabled or On except for USB Emulation which should be set for No Boot
* Press the F10 key to Save your changes
* Right arrow to Exit
* Down arrow to Exit Saving Changes and [press Enter] and reboot the system
* Once the blue Dell screen appears, power the system OFF
-or-
* At the blue Dell screen, press the F2 key
* The message, Entering Setup should appear
* Press the [Caps Lock], [Scroll Lock] and the [Num Lock] keys to light up all three lights on the keyboard
* Press the [Alt] and [E] keys at the same time. The system will emit a beep tone to indicate that nvram has been cleared
* Down arrow to Integrated Devices [press Enter]
* Set everything to On except for USB Emulation which should be set for No Boot
* Press the [Esc] key, and then [press Enter] to save the changes and reboot the system
* Once the blue Dell screen appears, power the system OFF

INSTALL THE PCI VIDEO CARD -
* Open the case cover and add the PCI video card
* Connect the monitor to the added PCI video card
* Power on your computer
* Let the computer boot up and load the drivers off of the CD provided with the card

Quotes taken from THIS page.

londonman81

Rex_Mundi wrote:

I found the following in a dell forum. It will tell you exactly the steps to take to switch to a new PCI card for your Dimension 3000.

Dimension V, L, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2350, 2400, 3000 (PCI video cards)

DISABLE THE ONBOARD VIDEO CARD IN THE DEVICE MANAGER -
* Right click the My Computer icon
* Click Properties
* Click the Hardware tab and/or the Device Manager button
* Open the Display Adaptors. You should see the Intel video card
* Double click the listing for Intel whatever
* At the bottom under "Device Usage", click the down arrow and change this to "Do not use this device, disable"
* Click OK- Apply- OK
* Close all boxes when done
* Click Start- Shutdown- Restart- OK or Click Start- Turn Off Computer- Restart

RESET THE BIOS TO DEFAULTS -
* At the blue Dell screen, press the F2 key
* The message, Entering Setup should appear
* When the System Setup screen appears, press the F9 key
* Press the Enter key to confirm that you would like to load the defaults
* Right arrow over to Advanced
* Down arrow to Peripheral Configuration [press Enter]
* Ensure that all USB listings are set to Enabled or On except for USB Emulation which should be set for No Boot
* Press the F10 key to Save your changes
* Right arrow to Exit
* Down arrow to Exit Saving Changes and [press Enter] and reboot the system
* Once the blue Dell screen appears, power the system OFF
-or-
* At the blue Dell screen, press the F2 key
* The message, Entering Setup should appear
* Press the [Caps Lock], [Scroll Lock] and the [Num Lock] keys to light up all three lights on the keyboard
* Press the [Alt] and [E] keys at the same time. The system will emit a beep tone to indicate that nvram has been cleared
* Down arrow to Integrated Devices [press Enter]
* Set everything to On except for USB Emulation which should be set for No Boot
* Press the [Esc] key, and then [press Enter] to save the changes and reboot the system
* Once the blue Dell screen appears, power the system OFF

INSTALL THE PCI VIDEO CARD -
* Open the case cover and add the PCI video card
* Connect the monitor to the added PCI video card
* Power on your computer
* Let the computer boot up and load the drivers off of the CD provided with the card

Quotes taken from THIS page.

Thanks very much - done all that and looks like it works finally!

I can't believe the card comes with no instructions on any of this - at least something to say that I need to ensure the onboard graphics is swtiched off!

Also - I had to make sure that on the monitor menu screen I I had 'Digital' selected instead of Analogue in ordee to take advantage of DVI.

There seems to be a slight improvement with DVI although not massive,

The one thing I have noticed is that in Yahoo email the bold blue that I get when I get a new email is blurry and has a blotted effect - this didn't happen before.

Any clues as to why this happens?

Thanks again!

L

Rex_Mundi

I can't believe the card comes with no instructions on any of this - at least something to say that I need to ensure the onboard graphics is swtiched off!

The problem for card manufacturers is the fact that there are so many different methods of installing a new graphics card. Even different models of Dell computers need different methods to get a new card installed and running. Multiply this by the amount of different PC manufacturers, plus self build models, and they would need to provide a massive volume to give you all the different combinations to install them.