Fried graphics card

[Martyuk39]

This machine had an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro which got unrealistically hot - the heatsink/fan wasn't working, and had in fact become detached from the card. This was consistent with the gobbledygook on the screen. So I've tried a couple of other cards - an 9500 Pro and an Geforce 6200 (the latter with no additional power needs). Nothing comes on screen when I switch on. There's lots of activity in the machine - lights, fans (CPU and GPU) but it doesn't boot. Could anyone help?

Antec Sonata 1 case (very dusty inside for some reason)
Asus K8Vse-deluxe 754
Athlon 3400
Maxtor 250GB SATA1 disk
Sony CDRW/DVD
2x512MB Crucial 3200 RAM
AGP graphics - see above

 

[Martyuk39]

Solved the problem - cleared the CMOS. No idea why this helped, but I got the idea from a couple of other posts about lack of display. Research pays off! Thanks Anandtech...