Dell Vostro 200 - Bad PCI Express Card?

Hi Everyone,

I have a friend who owns a Dell Vostro 200 with a PCI Express video card that appears to have gone bad? (or the slot or BIOS has). When the original video card is plug in, vertical red/green lines randomly appear across the screen. Likewise, thinking this PCI express video card was bad and could not use it to video test, I put in an old PCI video card which works but only present VGA resolution. I then purchased a new PCI express video card and tried replacing the believed defective one. However, the card is not detected regardless of removing the VGA card or not. On a few start-ups, I do receive a single beep which from what I understand from Dell could? indicated a bad BIOS???.

I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to what the problem may be or how it can be corrected back to a higher resolution using an alternative slot or otherwise? Thank you in advance....

MEtten

 

Welcome to Major Geeks!

On the old PCI slot card, have you checked to see if a driver is installed for it? In Windows Vista/7/8, go to CONTROL PANEL > DEVICE MANAGER to check. In XP, go to CONTROL PANEL > SYSTEM, click the "Hardware" tab then click "Device Manager".

If it shows no driver or a generic one, you can try to have Windows automatically update the driver. If this doesn't work, look at the card and see it it says the type of processor (usually NVIDIA or ATI). To get the latest NVIDIA drivers, go to www.nvidia.com. For ATI, go to www.amd.com.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for the reply and greeting ! : )

It shows up as a Standard VGA card and states that the current driver is the best driver for the card. This is for the card in the plain PCI slot and not the Express. The one in the Express does not even show up and I have used the manufacturers CD - Vista install.

I am wondering if a higher end (resolution and output) PCI card exists so to replace this card with it or if a PCI Express testing software program exists just to proof the PCI express slot is bad.

The few (testing programs) here do not seem to indicate a bad card.

MEtten