Power Outage

[PC Plus]

Hello,

The computer that I am working on is a Dell Demensions XPS D300 with a Pentium II processor at 300Mhz. It also has 160 MB of Ram 40 GB hard drive and is running windows XP. The problem is that one evening the power went out for a few seconds and when it came back there was an error message on the screen. The problem now is that when the monitor is connected to the computer there is no picture. The monitor is fine because I hooked another computer to it. Does anyone think that the video card is bad?

Thank you.

[roomwithamoose]

Power outages can easily damage computer components permantely. If you are having problems related to an outage, which it certainly sounds like you are, then your best bet is going to be swapping out the part and popping them into other computers to test them. The video card could be toast, the psu may have fried, or you could have lost a simply tiny component on the motherboard that is preventing the computer from properly operating. Does the whole computer power up?

[PC Plus]

The computer does power up, there is a beep and it sounds like the HDD is being accessed. I will change out the video card and see what happens. If it is the video card, what brand do you recommend replacing it with given the age of the computer and that it is only used for email and web surfing?

Thank you.

[Cricket]

You'll need to be sure you get an older 1 or 2x AGP video card or a universal AGP video card that uses 3.3 volts...all the newer AGP video cards are 1.5 volts. If you stick a 1.5 volt video card in a 3.3 volt slot, you'll get fireworks.

I had that exact DELL model a few years ago. I tried a Matrox G100 in it and it worked fine.

:) Cricket

[PC Plus]

Thanks Cricket, but I put in a video card from an old computer that I know works, and no picture. When I turned on the computer the PSU fan and CPU fans ran but there was no beep and it acts like the computer is dead. It looks like the computer is done.