Stumped by a Simple Thing...Video Card Install...

[cohenfive]

i'm not a novice and not a tech guru either, but over the years i've done a lot of upgrading of pc components in our home and this one has me totally scratching my head. sorry for the long description:

i bought my son a brand spanking new hp p6180t pc last week. it is a pretty robust machine except for graphics so i also decided to install a graphics card. the pc has windows vista home premium 64 bit, core 2 quad 8300, 6gb ram, etc....the card i bought (from the b/s on atech) is an asus radeon 4670 512mb card. last night i tried unsuccessfully to install it. here's what i did, maybe you guys/gals can help me get it working.

1. installed the card--it was a very tight fit but i got it in there.
2. booted the pc--windows recognized that there was new hardware, searched for a driver and could not find one (first sign of problems). the card is in the slot (fan is working) but the pc has no idea what's in there--no sign of it in device mgr which is using a basic vga driver.
3. put the included asus driver disk in, and in the process of loading the software i get an error message that it couldn't load something. it then finishes installing what it could, and says the driver has been installed. however, there is still no sign that the pc knows the card is there and still shows basic vga driver being used.
4. i rebooted, still no sign of the card being installed and driven by the pc.
5. i tried reinstalling the software a couple more times with the same results. it's now past my bedtime!
6. i went to ati.amd.com to try downloading the software directly from the website. i tried installing the entire software package twice and also tried installing just the driver. each and every time the install would get literally to the end and then totally freeze the pc, necessitating a hard reboot. still no driver and no working video card.

my plan is to take the card out, restore the pc to an earlier date before all this started, and maybe try again...but i'm basically out of my limited bag of tricks. should i try loading the software before installing the card? i can do that, but i thought windows would've recgonized this pretty standard hardware on its own...

i'd really appreciate advice/suggestions. i've never had this happen before. thanks!!

 

[mpilchfamily]

Most OEM systems have just enough power in there PSU to run the system as it is. Adding a new video card like that puts allot of added strain on the PSU and it seams its not able to handle the extra load. So you will need to get a new PSu for the system. If you still encounter problems installing drivers after that there may be more going on.

 

[cohenfive]

Interesting, you really think it wouldn't even load the diver beause of
The card? I've put cards into other machines without incident, mostly dell
Machines. I may try to start from scratch without the card but this time
Load the driver first. Also, this model pc is available from hp with almost the same video
Card from the factory. This is disappointing if true but does make some
Sense.

 

[cohenfive]

Interesting, you really think it wouldn't even load the diver beause of
The card? I've put cards into other machines without incident, mostly dell
Machines. I may try to start from scratch without the card but this time
Load the driver first. Also, this model pc is available from hp with almost the same video
Card from the factory. This is disappointing if true but does make some
Sense.

 

[TheStu]

Was there another graphics card in there already?

If it was using onboard graphics, what kind were they?

Vista does not allow heterogeneous drivers for GPUs, so if the system used to have an nVidia GPU then you will need to get rid of the nVidia drivers first.

 

[cohenfive]

it came with integrated graphics, never had a graphics card installed beforehand. this is what it came with:

Integrated graphics - Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator X4500 [VGA]

interestingly, look at the options for installed graphics cards: i haven't checked but have to think that some of these use as much power as the 512mb 4670 i installed. there is no mention of a psu upgrade with a better graphics card.

512MB NVIDIA GeForce G210 [DVI, HDMI, VGA]
512MB ATI Radeon HD 4350 [DVI, HDMI, VGA adapter]
1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 [DVI, HDMI, VGA]
1GB ATI Radeon HD 4650 [DVI, HDMI, VGA]
1.5GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 230 [DVI, HDMI, VGA]

 

[Xordae]

If you can install the 4650 without upgrade, chances are the 4670 will be fine as well.

Get the latest Catalyst drivers directly from the ATI homepage, forget the Asus drivers. See if that works.

 

[cohenfive]

i tried downloading them from ati and they crashed my pc. i'm going to try taking the card out, loading the drivers, and then putting the card back in to see if that works.

 

[Xordae]

Taking the card out won't help you anything. The card is in there and it's recognized. You just have a driver problem. Download http://downloads.guru3d.com/Gu...up)-download-1655.html and clean your system of the old graphics drivers, as well as the badly installed Asus and ATI ones. Then reboot, clean again and try installing the ATI ones again. It might also help turning the on-board graphics OFF in the Bios, I don't know if that is possible or if you did that. Never used onboard graphics.

 

[corkyg]

You described the tight fit, etc., but did not mention connecting the aux power cable to the card. If it requires one, did you do that? And, it is a PCI Express 2.0 card. Is your slot compatible?

 

[woofersus]

It usually doesn't matter if onboard graphics is turned on in BIOS still (OEM boards usually have a much less robust BIOS anyway, so it may not even be possible) but uninstalling any old drivers is important. Definitely use the cleaner tool.

 

[cohenfive]

thanks, will use the cleaner tool and try again later today. no aux power cord for this card.

 

[cohenfive]

i took off all the ati stuff and ran the cleaner tool to be sure, then tried reinstalling the ati software package from their website. i noticed that it froze when norton was trying to scan it, so i thought maybe that was the problem. i cleaned it up again, then turned norton off and reloaded the ati driver/software package. low and behold it loaded, but i didn't have the card in there. i put the card back in and rebooted the machine and now i can't get the pc to turn on the monitor when it's booting or running. the pc seems to be booting fine but there's no display at all..which makes it impossible to figure out what's going on.

see below, i'm going to try a different sequencing to see if that works.

 

[cohenfive]

this may be in the sequencing...i took the card out and rebooted and the display works again. i think i'm going to try the following, hope it works....

1. clean out the ati software/driver again (even though it seems to be loaded ok now)
2. put the card in
3. boot the pc, and i think it will drive the display off the generic vga driver while i do the rest
4. turn off norton
5. reload the ati software/driver
6. pray

 

[Xordae]

Weird. This may be a stupid question, but you did plug the monitor into the Radeon when you installed it, you didn't leave it in you Intel GMA slot, right?

Maybe the graphics card is indeed faulty. But I would always reserve that option for last.

 

[cohenfive]

ok, i'm a complete idiot (but at least i recognize that!). in all the plug in/plug out, card in, card out, i did plug the monitor into the mb dvi port, not the radeon dvi port. just loaded the ati software/driver with the card in, and with the dvi plugged into the radeon, and i think it all installed fine...pc is rebooting now. i'm keeping my fingers crossed.

this shouldn't have been this difficult. i don't know why norton would block a download from ati, and i also don't know why the install from the driver disk failed (likely the same reason). all the more reason to dump norton when the trial subscription ends in a couple of months.

 

[Xordae]

Norton is a system hog, and ever since I saw it in action on my dad's PC I gave it a wide berth. Avira AntiVir is an excellent, free program if you're looking for a replacement.

Also we should all be glad that it's such a simple error that made the PC not work, and not something serious. Live and learn.

 

[cohenfive]

thanks all, pc's running on the radeon driver as i hoped. appreciate the help. i hate norton! it could at least give me a message that it's blocking something...