Okay, so right now I'm using a 440mx which is pretty much the bottom of the totem pole as far as you can get. However, recent gaming additions have caused me problems with excess lag to an almost unberable amount.

So I ask my brother if we can swap cards since all he ever plays is his nintendo emulator. He says sure.

I put his gforce4 ti4200 into my computer and start up. The computer boots up, I can even hear it do the same routine it always does. However, the light on my monitor simply blinks.

My card works in his computer, his card works in his, my card works in mine. His card however, doesn't seem to want to work in mine.

Any quick things you guys think I can try?

To clarify, I know the port isn't dead because my old card works, I know the card isn't conflicting with any other devices because I pulled everything out but the ram and CPU, I know my monitor is working. I even know that when I turn on my PC that it boots up as normal...just I can't see anything.

What motherboard are you using and I assume its an AGP card and not a PCI?

was the MX440 a pci card?, you might have to do some jumpering or enable your AGP slot in bio's to get it to work


also, do you get one really long beep during boot up?

You also should log in with the MX440 card, and then reset to 60hz refresh rate, and default display drivers. Also check in the bios to make sure agp is enabled.

It's an Asus board, currently playing host to a 2ghz p4. Never had a problem with it before specifically.

Both my old card and the new one are AGP. And no I didn't get a long beep.

Gonna try that now Dart.

You never get video even for the BIOS screen or loading XP screen?

Correct.

A few things of note.

There's no video even during post. Nothing. Nada. And now I don't even think it's booting up, but going to BIOS but I can't see anything.

I've tried setting everything to AGP VGA 4x, tried logging out of XP in safe mode.

Basically I turn my comp off, pull my mx440 out, put the ti4200 in. At this time the monitor is just showing a 'no signal found' until I plug it into the ti4200. Then the no signal found disapears my screen goes black but is 'on' and the green power indicator is flashing as it alwayd does when my computer is off but the screen is on.

Now I turn on my computer. Everything winds up and I can hear the tell-tale noise of my harddrive at work but that goddamn flashing green light continues to taunt me.

Also if it's relevant, it's an Asus p4s333 motherboard and my brother uses an Intel D865PERL

Oh yeah...the wierdest thing is though when I plug my old card back in (fourth time now)...when I boot up it goes straight to the BIOS with an error message stating that the CPU speed is set incorrectly and I have a choice of resetting it manually or setting it to 2000mhz or 2666mhz. I reset it to 2ghz and everything works peachy.

This is a shot in the dark, but is there a way to lock your CPU speed settings in the BIOS? I have no idea what about a video card could be affecting that, but if it's changing when you switch cards maybe you need to find a way to lock it down.

Also, have you thought about the power supply? The ti will definitely require more power than the mx. Does your brother's have a better power supply, or does your have more devices pulling power? Maybe try cutting those down to a minimum for a test.

nm! Did a little digging around and it seems my motherboard has issues with any 8x agp card...none of them go to POST. I can't find a fix of any kind so it seems that it's time I upgrade. 8/

Thanks though for the suggestions.

No Bios updates?

Also, one other thing to check, make sure the agp/pci speed is locked into place correctly, if it's running to high, if u picked the 26666 or whatver, and u have a 2ghz, it could drastically raise the speed, and the end result, could be a burnt up card :(

Good Luck

See if this works. Mabe its a long shot. Install your old/original card. Boot up normally and uninstall the driver then shut down. then startup with the new card, if you get any BIOS related message on bootup, break into the BIOS setup and then save 'n exit (many times it will auto adjust). Boot straight into safe mode and skip any driver installation or just let it install the standard VGA Driver (this is what we want anyway) 640X480 @ 16color. Boot normally and install the latest appropriate driver (remember to cancel any auto-driver install, so I would be a good idea to download the driver pack from nvidia beforehand). If you can get this far and are able to restart after driver installation you should be good. I've seen this black screen issue when old ghetto monitors are connected to a newer card (I usually just connect the computer up to a newer monitor first).

woops well I guess I should have read the 8x agp entry before running my mouth. sheesh sorry for the unnecessary information.