Need Some Help Diagnosing Possibly Broken Video Card

[Elesirdur]

So, I came home this evening and, as I usually do, I turn on my computer on my way in. I hear the little Windows7 start up tune but, when coming to my computer a minute or so later I'm greeted with a blank screen. I shake the mouse and tap the keyboard, thinking the monitor has gone to sleep (which I had disabled weeks ago when I installed 7), but there's no change. I turn the monitor's power on and off and, again, no change just a blank screen.

I do a hard reboot and again, nothing comes up on the screen. It is taking an oddly long time to load the OS, but without being able to see the BIOS POST or any other information, it's hard for me to tell what's going on. So thinking my monitor might be screwy I unplug it and haul out an old LCD of mind in the closet. Turn the system off (hard booting on the power supply, I hate doing that) plug in the old monitor and boot up the system. Once again I've just got a blank screen with this monitor briefly stating "No Signal Input".

The system definitely boots to the OS, but it is taking a while. I thought it might be a Win7 problem, so I shut down and swap to an old HDD with WinXP on it (same hardware setup though). WinXP boots up - takes a while, though that could just be XP - with the same issue, blank monitor and seemingly no video output.

Now here's the kicker, with my PS3 on I can play media off my computer (on both the Win7 and XP HDDs, tried it on both) so the system is clearly operating with some functionality.

Unfortunately, my ASUS PK5-E mobo doesn't have an onboard video output so I'm only left to think that my 2-year old 8800 GT video card has finally bitten the dust. The video card's fan still spins up, so there's power to it. I tried removing and reseating it in the main PCI-X slot and swapped the 6-pin power cable to a secondary one; still no video output. I have yet to try swapping the card to my mobo's secondary PCI-X slot, though somewhere in the back of my head I recall that the secondary slot only functions if there's already a card in the main slot. I'm going to try that now though.

So, from my tl;dr description does it sound like I no longer have a functioning video card? I'll add at the last that my card has been running just fine lately, no crashing or overheating issues to my knowledge.

I really appreciate any input anyone has!

PS: Posting from my shitty laptop

[Cephius]

Do you have a different video card you can test with? Just to make sure before you drop 200 bucks on a new card.

[Elesirdur]

I actually resolved this issue by swapping the card into the secondary PCI-X slot. Everything seems to be working fine, but I can't imagine what would cause the primary slot to not work with the card. Oh well, I've been wanting a new card for a while so maybe I'll be getting one sooner than I thought.