Pc won't boot after installing new graphics card

[skarin]

hi new to the forum ok so i brought the pny geforce gts 450 from pc world i got it home and installed it the computer booted up fine went through the set up still no issues it said it needed to restart so i agreed it rebooted and with in 2 minutes it said it wanted to shut down and i didn't know why so i kept cancelling it untill i got pissed off with it and shut it down when i booted it back up about 3 seconds after it shut down and the monitor said no signal i was like wtf ? so i turned it off and on again still no signal so i took the graphics card out and booted it up i thought it would work but it didn't so the fist thing i tried was resetting the BIOS by taking out the CMOS battery for 24 hours overkill i know but i still didn't work i took everything out and then put it back in again i tried a different psu and still nothing i'm not hearing any beeb codes or a single beep to tell me my processor is ok i tried 1 stick of ram in at a time still nothing so i put it in its box and thought i'll just get a new mother board seeing how the one i have is aztec so 2 days went by and my mate said his geforce gtx 980 is getting all the low specs on his games so i suggested that he borrow my gts 450 cuz i wanted to see what it can handle so we took it round his removed his gtx 980 and installed mine and the same thing happened to his what happened to mine just said no signal on his monitor so i took it out and put his old one in and nothing happened could someone please help me sort this out!!

 

[Raiddinn]

You can't just take a video card out and shove another one in and expect it to work just fine.

If you have the wrong video card drivers and you boot the system it could cause BSODs, restarts, and other crazy stuff.

I think you probably need to boot into safe mode and delete all the video card drivers on both computers.

If you don't think you can do that adequately, it isn't hard to just reinstall windows. You will lose data, though, but it is guaranteed to get rid of corrupted video card driver files.

 

[inzone]

Wow what a mess. By any chance did you unplug your power supply when you took out the video cards ? If you don't you will cause problems , anytime you remove hardware from a computer you have to unplug the power supply. So try this unplug your psu and while it is unplugged put in your video card and then plug the psu back in and start it up and see if that makes a difference.

 

[suteck]

Sounds like you need to RMA the video card. Once, maybe you f$&@ something up but twice??? I say bad card.

 

[Raiddinn]

Sounds like you need to RMA the video card. Once, maybe you f$&@ something up but twice??? I say bad card.

Probably more than half of RMAd things get returned with a "It is working just fine" note attached to it.

Better the OP try to make sure that the problem really is the video card and not their own configuration failures first.

If someone just rips out a card without uninstalling it, and then shoves in another card and installs new video card drivers on top of the old ones, it could fail to copy files with the same names as those that already exist from the previous card or any number of other things that would cause stability issues.

The OP should do what I said, not just RMA the card at this point.

 

[suteck]

@ Raiddinn - Normally I would agree with you but when you stick a new card in your comp and start it for the first time windows normally loads it's own default drivers just to make the card work. At that point you can go ahead and remove the old drivers from the previous card and install new drivers for the new card. That has always been my experience. It wouldn't hurt to put the old card back in and uninstall the old drivers first but his computer, and his friends, shouldn't just not give a signal and everything else work fine. As long as the card is getting all the power it needs to run.

@ OP, I noticed you said you changed out the psu but did either of the ones you tried or your friends computer's psu have the "(with a minimum 12V current rating of 38A)" that the card requires? Without that it's not going to run. Check the side of all three psu's and see if one of the rails have that much amperage on it. If it's a single rail and the label gives you that rating you should be fine for power. If you have multiple rails make sure one has the 38A and that one's plugged into the video card. If it doesn't give you that much on any you will either need a different card or a different psu with that rating on at least 1 rail.

 

[Raiddinn]

In conjunction with what Suteck said, it has to be a GOOD PSU with 38a. Not a liar brand PSU that says they do 38a when they really do 18a.

Suteck - I just did a flawless change over of my graphics card from a 4870 to a 6850 just today. I uninstalled the card, restarted, let it boot to windows and then told it to shut down. Then I took the old card out and put the new one in, and turned it on. Then I installed drivers and it is working perfectly.

This is how it is supposed to be done for those who like to take shortcuts. More safe is just to reinstall windows every time you change the video card.

Video cards are one of the biggest causes of blue screens of death out of all of them, and many of those are for drivers that got messed up somehow. Installing new drivers while old ones are still installed is a possible way it CAN be messed up.

Without performing the change over properly, I can't guarantee that the system is going to work on the other side. In this case it obviously doesn't.

They followed the same flawed method both times and it broke both computers. I don't see how you can rule out the flawed process here.

 

[suteck]

I'm not completely discarding the idea that it might be a driver issue. Just given the 2 scenarios I'm more inclined to believe it's the psu or a bad card. I have on numerous occasions shut down a system, removed and replaced the video card - even went from ati to nvidia, and booted just fine. Then, I installed the drivers for the new card and everything worked properly. On top of that, now that I knew the card worked I pulled it out to sell it and replaced the original card and everything worked flawlessly. Didn't even need to reinstall drivers. The computer found the "new hardware" and (re-)installed the correct drivers for it that were already there. That has just been my experience. You are correct in the procedure you laid down as the proper way to do a new installation. I'm just giving my opinion on what I believe the problem to be, not that other people's suggestions are wrong.

 

[Raiddinn]

If it was a bad card, they should just be able to put back in the old good ones and have it work, but they can't.

Either that or there is simple driver errors that reinstalling windows can fix.

Even if they RMA the card, they aren't going to get anywhere with their PCs till they install windows as far as I can tell. I would rather see them reinstall windows with the card on site in case the card really is working.

 

[TC COMPUTER-TECH]

OK, question! A computer boots normally without GPU, RADEON 6850. It's a failed card for sure, I'm doing the oven trick right now. Is there a fix I don't know about or any info I could use with this? Anyhow, once I put the GPU in the tower on mobo, just don't boot, I even just put the 6-pin power connector to it, and still makes the power supply fail and not boot at all. (Not connected to board), which means the GPU has a power issue, where can I find more info on this? Any help thanks!

 

[COMPUGENIUS]

what you must do is unplug all power connectors from the mobo and then remove your processor chip from its socket take off the CMOS battery as well, *note: do not at anytime touch the pins of the processor chip. now press and hold down the power button on the CPU for at least 30sec. now reconnect everything normally to the mobo. at this stage you can boot into windows through the avdanced boot menu by perssing F8 at start up. now select enable VGA mode and press enter, if the PC boots just fine, now you have to install the correct graphics drivers for the GPU/grahics card. if it does not still work reinstall windows.... if you get stuck at any step please feel free to contact me