Geforce 8600 GTS

[Jarwulf]

I'm having major problems with my Geforce 8600 GTS video cards in Windows xP. I had installed it on a Sony VAIO with the onboard graphics adapter that identifies itself as Intel 82915G/GV/910GL Express chipset Family. I put the video card in the PCI-e slot and I believe I had used a VGA cable with the DVI adapter for the card. It had worked fine back then. At some point someone had reformatted the computer and went back to using the onboard video. When I tried to reuse the card no matter what DVI slot I plugged it into (It has two for some reason) the monitor does not get any signal from the card. It doesn't show up as newly detected hardware in the device manager so I can't install drivers. I reseated the card, no dice, I unplugged and plugged the card's power supply cable. I tried to disable the integrated video from BIOS but there is no option I tried disabling the intel graphics adapter from the device manager but even though it shows up as disabled it still works when I have it plugged in The vga cable I'm using works fine when I use it for the onboard video. I tried using a DVI single link cable but no luck there either. The card fan spins happily everytime I turn on the computer whether or not I have its power cable plugged in. All my other comps are laptops so I can't test on them. Anyone know how I can get this thing to work?

 

[toyota]

do you have pci-e set for the display in the bios? some computers I have worked on were set to onboard or pci in the bios and would only give a blank screen if you tried to use a graphics card in the pci-e slot.

 

[Jarwulf]

do you have pci-e set for the display in the bios? some computers I have worked on were set to onboard or pci in the bios and would only give a blank screen if you tried to use a graphics card in the pci-e slot.

I hunted high and low for an option to set the display in BIOS but there simply wasn't anything. There was stuff for the lan and sound controller but nothing for display. Any attempt to disable the onboard video seems to be in vain. I wonder how I got it to work in the first place.

 

[Jarwulf]

Anybody have any ideas? If I start up windows with the video card connected to the card and plug it back into the intel gma the welcome screen pops up. The card is not detected by windows at all even though the fan is running. Does this mean its dead?