It's been awhile since I've had to ask for computer help but... The time has come again.. ^^;;;;;;;;;;

Just before Christmas, I bought an ATI Radeon 9250 video card for my simple little Dell 2400, mainly to play one game that I bought accidentally and I didn't want to have to wait 4-5 years for a new computer to try and play it then... ^^;;; Just to be clear, I'm not a PC gamer and am not looking to play the most advanced FPS whatchamacallit on this bucket... I just wanted to shoot at stuff with a P-38 Lightning. Apparantly, that's too much to ask from my machine... [sigh] So, I bought the cheapest card that meets the game's requirements.

Well, I only JUST got around to trying to install it and.. Well... After installing it.. I turn on my machine only to find... That it won't boot. No error messages, nothing even on the stupid screen. Monitor's plugged in but it's not receiving a signal... The system DID beep when I turned it on... But... That was about it. Shutting it off and turning it back on didn't do anything either. Though, it didn't beep the second time. It just stood there. Power light on, no hard disk movement. Nothing. With a heavy sigh, I opened her up again, yanked out the card, put her back together, and then she booted up just fine.

To make matters worse, the instructions are pretty generic and says nothing specific about this model of card... The most noise it makes is about connecting it to the power system which... Is hard as I looked over the card... There aren't ANY power plugs on it. None. Zero. Zilch. Just one tiny 2 pin connector labeled, "Fan1", mysteriously. I've looked over the written and digital documentation over and over again, no help. I've looked online, but everything I read are of people having problems AFTER getting the computer to boot and install the card's software. Nothing about it not even booting from the start.. :\

Anyway... Does anyone have any advice on this?

The only thing that stands out to me right away is, given the age of your machine, your AGP port might not support the speeds of that card's AGP connection (4x/8x). Double check that your AGP port isn't 1x/2x.

-- BK

But it's not AGP. Both the card and all my ports are PCI.

PCI? Or PCI-e?

-- BK

I'm pretty sure it's regular PCI. At the very least, the whole card fit perfectly.

I would check the specs on the box just to ensure you have the right interface. If my research on the card is correct, it comes in all three flavours: PCI, AGP, and PCI-e.

Other than that... it almost sounds like it's either a dead card, or it's not receiving enough power. Does it have an external power plug to take one of the molex power plugs (e.g., the kind of plug you plug into a hard drive)?

It's PCI. Says so on the box. As for the power issue... As I described in my original post, it doesn't have ANY plugs on it save for one tiny two pin plug labelled fan1. That's it. And no, it doesn't have fans. Just one gigantic heat sink.

Here's a stupid question, though... Something I've been wondering about but haven't had a chance to try out because of my schedule... When I installed it and plugged back in all the power and stuff... Should I have plugged my monitor into it instead of its standard port?

Hm... your previous vid card is integrated into the motherboard? Hm. That might be the issue. You probably want to plug the monitor into the new video card. Also, you'll want to disable the integrated video card on the motherboard through the BIOS.

-- BK

Ooh, BIOS surgery... Fun... If I screw up, it can be fixed, right...? ^^;;;;;

Usually. If nothing else, a BIOS can be reset back to its defaults fairly easily.

-- BK