Hp m9300t upgrade problem

[stumick]

I have a question for the community. I purchased a new psu and graphic card for my hp m9300t. the card is a bfg nvidia geforce 9800 gt 1gb gddr3 ecointelligence model. It requires a minimum of 350watt psu. That is what my HP pc came with but I was told that I should have a larger psu to make sure it can handle the card and my pc. So I purchased an Antec earthwatts 500watt psu for my pc. I googled how to install both the card and psu and didnt seem too difficult. I first installed new psu, turned on pc and everything worked fine. then i went ahead and read instructions on install for card install. i first went to uninstall old card drivers, did that, it restarted pc, i then shut pc down and proceeded with card install. got old card out, new one in. when i turned pc on it was in 800x600 graphics style , you know the way where all icons are super huge. so i inserted cd and tried to install drivers off of it for new card but vista began looking for drivers online and cd wasnt allowing me to open it!! then my screen went black and pc still was running, i was hoping for it to switch to a nice looking screen but it stayed that way so i shut down pc by holding power button in, this whole process repeated twice with no luck and on that 2nd time I noticed that the new card was super hot to the touch!! I couldnt touch it with out it burning. that is when i realized maybe something was wrong. So i let it cool down before i attempted to try turning on pc again, even had some compressed air cans i used to speed process along. 3rd attempt i was able to access cd and install drivers, and then program said it had to restart windows, fine. I waited 10-15minutes and still wasnt shutting down!! and card was super hot!! so i decided to shut pc off again. let it cool off and tried to turn on pc and now it wont go past the loading green bars screen where it says microsoft, and this time I hear a spin and click at about 5sec intervals from hard drive. i did a diagnosis and hdd is failed, faulty! i wonder if psu is too much power for my rig? or is card bad? or was hdd failing and causing problem. I now restored old psu and old card and still same problem and am waiting to get new hdd and have to buy vista since i have no recovery disk!! any suggestions on what went wrong or what i can do? i still plan on upgrading card , but maybe with a lower watt psu, like 430watt? please help ,thanks for listening.

 

[evongugg]

Welcome to the fourms!

Did you connect the extra power connector on the 9800 GT?
Not sure why hard disk failed if you connected the PSU properly.
The power supply is not too much.