Hey everyone,

Had my graphics card fry so I replaced it but now the computer will not boot up. It hangs at the screen where it tries to detect the IDE drives. Can't enter bios or safe mode either. Any suggestions? I haven't tried anything because I really don't know what to do.

BTW, I read other posts about this but didn't find them too helpful.

Thanks,
Nick

Hi,
You have only VGA card damaged??? HOW?

Unplug DVD, HardDiskDrive and then try to boot into BIOS. If it does boot and let you changed settings (check hardware monitoring for info about Voltage) THEN TURN OFF power. Plug DVD boot into Bios. Turn OFF power. Plug one HDD, try to boot into bios but let it for at least 2 minutes to detect HDD. most likely that HDD has been busted if takes that time.
If you have RAID then what type 0 reinstal everything from clean
1 just disconect that drive

Thanks for the reply. I'll see what I can do. I really hope it's not my HDD that has failed. Could it be a bad power supply?

Nick

Ok, new info. I unplugged the DVD drive and I can now boot my computer using safe mode and enabling VGA graphics. I was able to replace my old busted graphics card with a new one and load the drivers for it, but that still didn't solve my problem. I still cannot boot windows normally.

Any suggestions? I've got a friend who said it could be an issue with the motherboard or the power supply.

Anything would be helpful. Thanks.

Hi milesofjazz

I do not think that your problem is related to Power supply. When I ask how your VGA was busted I ment to find out source of problem. If you could boot to safe mode then it is not likely that your problem is motherboard. Go to safe mode uninstall all extra VGA drivers (nVidia or ATI) leaving only Standard VGA from Microsoft. Boot normally and then use ONLY one driver at the time. Which VGA card you have???

To test motherboard and other components you could use some free software for burn in such as BurnIn Test from Passmark software or Ultimate Boot CD for DOS or Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. Dos version has all needed software for hardware troubleshooting but it is one by one. Windows version boot from CD not using your Windows but it is a bit slow to boot 3 minutes on 3 GHz CPU. Some time is not best solution to use the latest drivers for hardware it is usually only two versions after release.
Let me know how you go.

It was my power supply. Put in a new one that my friend had lying around and everything works fine now.

Thanks for everyone's input.

Nick

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