BleepingComputer.com: Video card w/ no monitor response, incompatibility issue or dead?

I'm having problems with a Nvidia geforce 9600gt video card I just installed; I can't tell if it's dead or may actually work while some kind of bad configuration issue is going on or what. It was given to me; I knew it was already used for some time. I was told it was expected to be noisy because the fan was messed up or something but otherwise worked fine. I first tried eliminating any possibility of potential noise that could have to do with heat overworking the fan so I thoroughly cleaned the card of dust with dry qtips/napkins and even reseated the heat sink onto the GPU with arctic silver, but I hope I didn't end up being too heavy handed or anything and that could've killed the GPU; I tried to be careful with doing it and thought I was. I don't know if this could be part of the problem either but I let it set out in the open a couple weeks before getting around to installing; during that time it's possible it could've been hit with static electricity by my cat or something. Can static electricity even fry hardware like that? I've heard of it but never personally seen it happen.

Anyway, I've doublechecked to make absolutely sure it was in the correct position and all the way down in the slot. There is one thing I'm not sure if could be part of the problem, I'm apparently not able to hookup DVI on this monitor (Acer V173 LCD monitor) and the card has only DVI slots, but I had a VGA-to-DVI adapter piece and used it to connect the cable. The card has 2 DVI slots and I've tried both. Either way had the same result... booting up my PC with my monitor plugged into the card will say "no signal" on the monitor but as soon as I unplug the cable, it will say something like "cable unplugged" (so maybe it detects it?). Could it be a monitor or connection incompatibility issue maybe?

Also, it's not being detected from Windows or anything else software wise from what I can tell so far. I tried this with both Windows XP 32-bit and Windows Vista 64-bit (same machine dual boot) and I don't see any entries relating to the card in device manager, even though the chipset I'm using was still listed. I tried the search for new hardware option too and it's the same. Also I did make sure to install the drivers for the card on both OS's and restart after. But not just that, strangely the automatic driver search tool on the Nvidia website would pick up my Nvidia chipset I'm using but not the card, had to manually search for it. Also, could I somehow verify if the card is being detected to exist in that slot at all in Everest a similar program? Another thing, I did go into BIOS and I set the entry for "main video adapter" (or similar) to "PCI express x16" and saved it and still there's no difference. Is there another BIOS setting that may help? Also I wonder if it's possible it could be incompatible with my motherboard too? My PC is a factory built, HP Pavilion a6530f.

Another thought I had is if the chipset (Nvidia geforce 6150SE) I have could be conflicting with the card somehow, but I'm not sure if how to verify that either; aside from that I'm exhausted of all other troubleshooting ideas. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, preferably within the next few hours if possible. I mean I'm used to silent PCs and my attempts at silencing this card were apparently for nothing because it's so loud I can only kinda tolerate it wearing earplugs lol. Aside from that, it seems to be vibrating the case some and I worry if that could eventually mess with the other internal components in a bad way. So if it actually might work, I decided I would just get a new fan for it, but otherwise want to get rid of it for obvious reasons. But either way after I have a better idea of what's going on, I want to go ahead and uninstall it at least for now because of the noise/vibration stuff.

My simple reasoning...

If the onboard video works, draw the appropriate conclusion.

If neither the onboard nor the new work...then you have a different problem.

If the card is properly installed and the BIOS settings changed so that the card is the system video vehicle (onboard video disabled)...the above should reveal the direction to go.

Louis

My chipset works fine; it's what I've been using. I've glanced over the video options in BIOS; mine only seems to let me change it to options for any card slot or onboard but not disable any particular thing that I can tell. But strangely it doesn't matter what I choose (and yes I save config); it just won't detect or display if I were to plug the cable to the card... however the chipset will with plugging to that even if I did have BIOS set to PCI express x16. Which is why I thought the drivers could be getting mixed up with the hardware because they're probably similar, though maybe it just defaults to whatever works regardless of settings. I've also wondered if maybe I could need some sort of DVI driver?

This post has been edited by Doot Doot: 06 April 2011 - 10:18 AM