PCI Vid card replacing Built In

[Zak33]

AM hoping you guys can help here....pleeeeeze

Have in front of me a Dell PC with Intel built in vid...1 mb or 8mb shared :animal smiley not yet created: with system ram. Otherwise fairy competent PC with a P4 3.06 and 512 mb.

In BIOS we have either Auto detect vid card or Onboard....no disable.

We have no AGP slot

So, a Rad 9200 SE has been aquired and when placed in the hole and we boot up, it does hold a signal to the monitor but does not show anything but a black screen. ie the monitor light stays green but we have to display. It runs BIOS ok and also runs half of Win XP boot up....then goes all dark !

Now have tried booting into BIOS, turning to Onboard, leaving Rad in theslot, and once into XP, instaling the drivers, which works, but when I reboot and then swap BIOS back to auto, swap the cable back over and wait, it gets half way and blacks out on me again.

So, back into BIOS swap back to Onboard, (swap lead to onboard too) reboot and then into display properties and the cards both show, and as alwas the Rad shows as two cards, cos its got two outputs.

Do I need to disable DVI alternate in the control panel?

Which brings me to my last situ: Contro panel keeps coming up with errors whewn I try to adjust stuff, although THATS probably cos of the Intel driversstil being in isnt it?

bugger...this is harder than it should be

[Betty_Swallocks]

Sell it on Ebay and buy some decent bits with the money.
Dells are more trouble than they're worth.

[daverobev]

At work, I have a Dell GX270 with onboard and a R9200 PCI...I think when I boot the machine, it starts on one monitor, switches to the other for the WINDOWS 2000 white/progress bar screen, then back when I get to login...do you have access to two monitors? Having intel drivers installed shouldn't cause problems, I'm running one monitor off one card and one off the built in...try making the other screen the main monitor in windows?? Do you have a second monitor to hand? IMO, windows is stupid and flickers backwards and forwards across the monitors but will eventually end up on the one you tell it to go to...you can switch monitors while the thing is on, by the way.

[malfunction]

Sell it on Ebay and buy some decent bits with the money.
Dells are more trouble than they're worth.

Very constructive.

*Usually* you take card out, put BIOS in auto, save, turn off, put card in and it SHOULD disable the onboard automatically

Just a thought here. But if all else fails how about just setting it to 1MB shared and disabling the card in windows (as in set it to disabled in device manager)? If the device isn't actually being used then MAYBE it won't impact his mem performance (apart from the missing MB)

Or how about a BIOS upgrade from Dell... Stranger things have been known to happen.

Failing that though Betty's advice is about as good as it gets. Check if the PSU is 1) decent and 2) standard ATX and then (assuming the case / front panel / mobo mounts are also standard ATX / mATX) buy a new mobo? Could probably sell the PCI 9200 to some mini ITX nutter