Broken Graphics Card?

[efficient]

My parents have a fairly old system which has just stopped working, the important aspects of the system are:

P4 3.0;
Ga-8IPE1000 series motherboard which is based on the Intel 865PE chipset (i dug out the manual to check); and
ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card (from memory, i cant find the manual).

As of earlier today the system appears to powers up (power supply, hard disks, and hsf can all be heard) however no signal is reaching the monitor. My thoughts would be that the graphics card is stuffed, would that seem reasonable? or should i investigate further? how would you suggest performing further tests?

The monitor can tell the difference between the cable being un-plugged or plugged in, so i figure some power must be making its way through the card? does this change things at all?

the motherboard doesn't have integrated graphics (as far as i can tell), So if it is the graphics card, where would you suggest is the best place (online) to purchase the cheapest nastiest compatible card? how cheap do you reckon i would be able to find something? and what series cards do you think i should be looking at?

 

[antas]

what do you mean by no signal reaching the monitor? Do you mean for nothing appear on the screen? Even the BIOS?

If that's so then there are many possibilities though: it could be the mobo, PSU, vga, or the processor ..

When you are powering up, did you hear any beeping sound? If you heard any beep, then it means that the mobo had a good chance to be OK. And there are good chance that the problems are with vga and/or memory . .

If you confident enough, try to take everything out (except processor), plug it in one by one ... Plug main devices only: proc+memory+vga. Try to power up and see if it's working . . After that plug the other and see . .

Basically is like that . . Good luck 🙂

 

[efficient]

Nothing related to the computer appears on the monitor (BIOS, Windows etc). just the monitors error message that there is "no signal detected" if i unplug the cable the monitors error message changes to something along the lines of "no cable detected".

i will have a play with it over the weekend and have a listen for the beeps. i am sure i will be coming back here with some more questions 🙂

Cheers

 

[efficient]

Thanks for the response and the people who sent PM's. This is where i am currently at.

There are no Beeps to be heard when the computer powers up. I assume this is a bad sign?

I have tried the following things:

1) removed the graphics card, tried to power on without it in. there was no change.
2) reinserted the graphics card, no change.
3) plugged in a graphics card (type unknown) from an even older P3, this doesnt work either (this graphics card works fine in the P3 system).
4) removed all the ram from the system and tried to power on (no change). also tried to power on with just one stick in the system (also no change).

Does this sound like the motherboard is stuffed? is there anything else you think i should try?

also few further questions (assuming the motherboard is stuffed):

Recovering data of the hard drive: can i just plug the hard drive into another computer and remove the data? even though it has windows intalled on it?

I imagine if i replace the motherboard i will need to reinstall windows. We have an OEM version of Windows. will i be able to reactiviate windows if i swapped the motherboard or is this to much of a change?

 

[Tenet]

Hi efficient,

That's right, its not a good sign if you don't hear a single beep on startup. You said you can hear the hdd on powerup (along with the cpu fan and psu), but is it just a constant drone? If the system were booting up, the hdd would make slight rattling sounds and the hdd indicator light would be flashing.

The next logical step would be to try swapping the PSU. If that's not it, you're down to the mobo and cpu.

To answer your questions:
Yes, you certainly can put the hard drive in another system to get the data from it. After you attach it and power up, don't let Windows load until you check the BIOS to make sure the system doesn't try to boot from that drive you added.

No, you don't have to reinstall Windows if you replace the mobo with the same model and the existing Windows wasn't damaged.

You can always reactivate Windows, regardless of what component you change on your system.