I have a dilema.
I have a computer that will not give me video when I turn it on. I am going to say right now that I am not by any stretch of the imagination an expert when it comes to building a computer. I had the thing working just fine, but I was upgrading it for my mother and she wanted more memory and an ethernet card so she could get on the internet. Well, I checked to make sure that the memory she gave me was the right type (very old, mind you, PC100 of all things) and did some research on how to install that card. I got everything put in, and now when I try to start the computer it plays several beeps (the only thing I can compare it to is if you are holding down a button and it plays that little “stop pressing my buttons!” sound) and nothing comes up on the screen. She has her monitor set to save power, so it goes inactive after a while, and when I start the computer it doesn’t even come out of that state; the computer is not sending anything to monitor at all. I have tested the monitor and even taken the old monstrosity over to my computer to make doubly sure, but the problem is in the CPU somewhere.
My first thought is that maybe I had damaged the video card somehow. Trouble is, I am not sure how to go about testing that. I have a couple of old systems here that I could pull one out of, but I have never installed a video card before, and I am not sure if it would even work. Compatibility and all. I am open to suggestions as I don’t know what to do with this thing. I don’t have another working unit to put that questionable video card in (a friend suggested that) that I am willing to subject to possible failure.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. My apologies if this seems like a dumb question, but I truly am not well versed in this type of thing. I love tinkering, though, and if I can fix this myself I really want to. Thanks in advance.
