New Video Card Installed, black screen now!

[hankypantz]

Hi guys, I have a Dell E510 desktop comp. Its running a 3.2 Pentium D with 2 GB RAM, and it came with one of those wimpy ATI radeon X600 Video cards and I wanted to upgrade for better video game play. I went to dell and got one of there recommended cards. The new card I installed is a NEW nVidia GeForce 6800 PCI-E x16 256MB DVI VGA. I first deleted my old video drivers and carefully installed the new card and upon firing it up to install the new video drivers the screen is completely black. The video card's fan fires up and the monitor gets power just is completely black! Im not sure what to do, i've checked the connections of the video card and cables. Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks in advance, Chase.

 

[mailpup]

Just checking but did you uninstall the old graphics driver from the Add and Remove Programs or did you mistakenly try to uninstall through the Device Manager?

 

[hankypantz]

working now

Thanks for the response mailpup. I've messed with it for the last few hours and after reseating the video card again I got it to work. When I uninstalled the drivers for the old video card I did it through the device manager. Should I have done it through add and remove programs? It seems to be working now, does it matter? I just tried to delete it through add and remove programs and it says error, so maybe its ok im not sure. Thanks for the fast response!

 

[mailpup]

You should uninstall through Add and Remove Programs. Uninstalling through Device Manager only "disconnects" the device from the system but the driver remains so that upon restarting, Windows will automatically reinstall the driver. Of course, if the hardware has been removed in the meantime, reinstallation won't occur but to avoid driver conflicts the old driver should be uninstalled (through Add/Remove) before installing any new graphic driver.

If there is any doubt in your mind, the websites of ATI/AMD and Nvidia have instructions on how best to install their drivers.

In your case if it's working, it is probably okay but there are utilities, such as Driver Cleaner, to remove any remnants of drivers in case there are any.

 

[hankypantz]

Ok

Yeah it's working fine, so im not going to mess with it. The reason I removed it through the device manager is because I didnt have directions and I was following some review online. I refused to buy the "refurbished" card off dell for $388 and I got it "new" off ebay for $70, so it came with no directions. Either way going from a x600 with 20 FPS to a 6800 GT with 120 FPS is a huge plus! Thanks for the help!

 

[samjohnson]

IM going to give you some advice hankypantz if you don't mind.

For one thing I would recomend not to buy a graphics card or anything like that from Dell. They are way over priced. (which I am sure you figured out ) Try going to newegg.com
And the 6800 GT is kinda outdated. Not sure what you wanted it for but you could have gotton a 7600 GT for pretty much the same price brand new from newegg.
Hopes this helps you out a bit for future shopping.

 

[kpo6969]

I agree and I own a Dell. I did the upgrades myself except for a dvd/cd drive. The rest I went to Crucial, Newegg, Mwave, etc.
BTW: You have the same psu as me: 305w 22amps
You could upgrade the video card as high as a 8600GTS or 7900GT
FYI
The reason the 6800 was $388.95 is that it is an origional OEM card that was offered as an option when your system was new. The price is crazy but there are some that would but it.

 

[beef_jerky4104]

You could get an 8800 GTX almost!