New Video Card = MB won't post?

[shieldsofwindurst]

Hi all,
So my main HDD went bad (the one with xp installed) on my 8-9 year old desktop so I bought a new one. I installed xp and got it up and running, but noticed that pretty much as soon as I got it up & running, there was unexpected display lag on things as simple as moving a window around (never been there before).

So I decided I'd get a new video card (current one is 6ish years old) after playing around seeing if there were any loose connections and unfortunately busting off a capacitor off the video card (I forgot there was an extra latch to unhook on AGP slots).

So I bought a new video card from best buy. They only had 2 AGP-based cards on sale, so I got one. Popped it in, first thing I saw was "Checking NVRAM..." during post and it hung there. Tried power off/on a few times, didn't even get that again-it either hung with no output to the display or beeped at me a bunch with no output to the display.

On a lark, I popped in my old video card (the one that I broke something off of) and look at that, it works fine. Lag I had seen before was still there, no real change. Dealt with the old setup for a few days, went back to best buy today, exchanged for their other AGP-based video card. Brought home, exact same thing-won't post at all, either beeps at me or stays silent without displaying anything to the screen.

My best guess is that the lag is due to the video card, though I suppose it's possible that the new HDD I bought is really crappy or something. I used to be able to full-screen online videos and get them relatively smooth and now when I full-screen it's choppy. Normal size they play fine. Thus I want to try to get one or the other of these new video cards to work to see if that's the problem.

My theories as to why the new cards won't work include:
1. My best guess right now is that my power supply is insufficient for my new card. I noticed that when I swapped in the new card a power connection to one of the fans started acting touchy whereas it used to work fine. Though it might just be going dead. More importantly however, the old card does not require an external power connector while both new cards do. This bothers me though because the 1st card I got said it required a 300W PS and the 2nd one says that it requires a 270W PS; I checked my PS and it says it's a 420W Max. Also, the PS has been louder than usual; I don't know what that implies. Maybe it's dying. Also, a quick google search shows people complaining about the model I have.
2. While trying to get xp installed, I was having other problems (some sort of IRQ conflict) so I ended up resetting the bios settings to the default. This might have screwed up something in recognizing the newer AGP. I have not as of yet explored updating the MB bios.
3. I boned something in messing around with the MB. I threw in an extra GB of RAM just 'cause I was doing general upgrading and xp sees it fine, so I think the RAM is fine, but I was messing around a bunch in there 'cause I had to swap a bunch of HDDs in to get some data off them. It's possible I broke something.

I'd rather not just build a new computer right now (though that's in the future plans-trying to keep costs down atm). So if anyone can explain why a clearly operational MB won't even post when I put in a new AGP video card, I'd like to at least try ruling out the video card before I try reinstalling windows again or something.

Specs:
CPU: 1.4Ghz Athlon XP 1500+
RAM: 2 GB
Motherboard: MSI MS-6712
Power Supply: Turbolink CWT-420ATX
Old Video Card (used to work fine): ATI Radeon 9000AGP Pro
New Video Card #1: ATI Radeon HD 3650 (VisionTek - ATI Radeon HD 3650 1GB DDR2 AGP Graphics Card - 900284)
New Video Card #2: ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro(VisionTek Radeon HD2400 Pro Graphics adapter - 512 MB - DDR2 SDRAM)
New HDD running windows: Western Digital Caviar Blue (7200 RPM, 320GB, EIDE)

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

[Avanarius]

Firstly, the lag as you described is likely caused by not having the proper drivers installed, or any drivers at all. Second, if you're diagnosing a problem with a new graphics card I recommend going back to your standard memory configuration (1gb assuming) to rule out any possibility of that causing the problem.

Also, I've seen a lot of problems with new AGP cards not working on really old AGP platforms. Even though they're still AGP they might necessarily work on an old board.

[Olo401]

Oh cool you have the same motherboard that's in my test machine! When I bought it I heard from a few people that MSI boards were kinda junky and the VIA chipset wasn't that great, but I never had a problem. In fact I kinda learned the basics of overclocking playing around with it because the BIOS was pretty simple (compared to the one I have now anyways).

It sounds like your system is hanging after POST & BIOS loads but before the OS, which makes me think the old card's drivers are interfering. Have you tried booting into Safe Mode yet? Give that a try. If it still doesn't work, pop the old card in so you can boot up to safe mode, uninstall the old card's drivers and install the new ones, then shutdown & switch to the new card again.

[Effluo]

When installing a new video card, it is good practice to uninstall the old drivers first. Also, a good run of CCCleaner in Safe Mode is recommended. Many graphics cards have problems when older drivers are still present.

My suggestion, uninstall old drivers, Run CCCleaner is Safe Mode. Shut down, install new graphics card and cross your fingers.

[Avanarius]

When installing a new video card, it is good practice to uninstall the old drivers first. Also, a good run of CCCleaner in Safe Mode is recommended. Many graphics cards have problems when older drivers are still present.

My suggestion, uninstall old drivers, Run CCCleaner is Safe Mode. Shut down, install new graphics card and cross your fingers.

So my main HDD went bad (the one with xp installed) on my 8-9 year old desktop so I bought a new one. I installed xp and got it up and running, but noticed that pretty much as soon as I got it up & running, there was unexpected display lag on things as simple as moving a window around (never been there before).

According to the lag he described, he doesn't sound like he installed video drivers at all! (For the old card)

There's various reasons as to why the new card wont work:

A: Not seated properly
B: Oddly not compatible with the new motherboard (though less likely)
C: You broke something in the agp slot when you tried to rip out the last card you tried

[shieldsofwindurst]

Thanks for all the suggestions, but I think it's something else. I asked on another forum and someone suggested that my AGP slot, which is supposed to support AGP 4x/8x, doesn't Actually support 8x, which both the new cards are. The fact that my bios only lets me select AGP 1x, 2x, or 4x seems to support this. This seems to account for why new AGP cards don't work with old AGP slots.

To Olo, I don't think it's posting/loading bios because when I popped in the 1st new card the very first time, I got some display-and the bios hung at "checking NVRAM". So clearly it's capable of outputting signal, it just seems to hang. Sometimes the MB beeps at me, and sometimes it's completely silent. In both cases there's NO processing at all, which you expect to see during post. So I think the 8x thing is more likely.

To Effluo, I tried uninstalling the old drivers with the 2nd new card, and I got the exact same behavior as with the first one.

To Avanarius, I did install the old card drivers originally through windows update, which I had never done before. I'm not 100% sure if the lag started before or after that, so I suppose it's possible that the drivers caused it in the first place. I did try to test that by rolling back the drivers (didn't help). I also installed the newest drivers from the ATI site (didn't help).

So here's hoping it's 4x/8x thing. I'm going to try getting an older video card that still in the same series as the one that currently works and throw that in there. Maybe I'll have better luck. Thanks for all the suggestions.

[Effluo]

Ah, that could be. Your board may support AGP 8x, but needs to be flashed to update it to do so... I hate flashing BIOS.

Good luck!

[Olo401]

Yeah go with the most recent BIOS flash and see if that does it. I'm 100% certain the board supports AGP 8x so this is probably your answer.

Still, I don't know why the card wouldn't just throttle down to 4x..