Hi all.
I am seeking a little advice regarding my Dell Studio 540 which over the past few days has developed a hardware fault.
When I turn the unit on I receive a series of 8 beeps and the screen remains blank. Following the beeps, the unit makes all the normal sounds it would as if it were starting up correctly, however I get no display. The unit is connected up to the monitor using a white DVI cable.
I have ruled out the monitor being faulty, as I connected it up to my old PC. As I could not get the unit to get past the beeping, I removed the 9800 Nvidia card from the motherboard and connected the unit up to the monitor using the onboard graphics. This then booted up fine.
This would suggest the graphics card is at fault, however I do not have another PC to test this card in (due to the power requirements) and therefore can't rule out the possibility the graphics slot on the motherboard is faulty. I've attempted to put an old ATI graphics card into the motherboard slot and connect it up using the white DVI cable, however this also displays nothing.
Would I need to be installing the drivers of the older ATI card on the PC first before it would show any display? I would have expected some sort of display from the older ATI card regardless of whether it was installed correctly.
Idea's and thoughts appreciated.
Many thanks.
