Power Supply Problem

I've done a few hardware upgrades in my computer before, but I have never messed with a PSU. I have a gateway 817GM desktop that was bought about 5 years ago. I've done a few minor upgrades, and these are the current specs (* came standard)

Intel Pentium IV Processor 3.0 ghz with H/T*
2 GB's RAM, 2 sticks 256mb*, 1 stick 512mb, 1 stick 1gb
nVIDIA GeForce 8400GS

The rest is pretty much standard issue. The rest of the specs for my PC are listed here.


Anyways, the power supply in the computer failed on me about 3 weeks ago. The computer would turn on for maybe a second before turning back off, but at one point it started for about 3 minutes before it shut off. When I went to look at it the next day, it wouldn't turn on even for one second. I confirmed with gateway that it was a PSU failure. After doing that, I researched as much as I could as I had no previous knowledge of PSU's, I opened up the case of my PC and found that I had a Hipro HP-P3087F3 model power supply, drew out where each cord was plugged into my computer's parts, and took out my PSU.

After doing more research online, I realized it wasn't economical to buy the exact same PSU as it was being sold for $50 most places and I could tell it wasn't worth that much. I took my PSU to best buy where the recommended their dynex DX-400WPS which can be seen here. They said it had more power on all rails than my current one, along with all the plugins necessary. I bought it without a question, took it home, and installed it.

After plugging the same plugs into the same places in the PC, I closed the case and turned on the computer. It started right away, making me hope that it would turn out to work just fine. I took the desktop back to where it would be sitting, plugged in the monitor to the VGA port in the graphics card, plugged in the tv to the DVI port in the graphics card, plugged in the other pieces, and turned on the computer again. Now when I turned the computer on, the monitor would not turn on. I decided to test out the TV to see if it was picking up the PC and sure enough it was. I booted up the computer, it would show windows loading on the TV screen, and just when it would get to the point where it would normally show the Windows XP login screen, the TV would then show a No Signal alert. My previous graphics card settings were set to clone the image for both the monitor and my tv, so it should have still been sending the image to my TV. I started up the computer in safe mode next, and the computer loaded just fine as expected but it was still only showing on my TV. When running off of safe mode, it still displayed on my TV the entire time.

I decided to run dxdiag to see if there was anything obvious messing with the display. It popped up with a message saying that it couldn't access diretsound. Under the video tab, it didn't show my graphics card as the device and instead showed vga followed by some numbers. I then decided to open my DVD drive just to see if that worked, and it ejected at about a quarter of the speed that it normally would.

I understand that I likely need a different power supply and I would like recommendations there. I also want to know if there is any way to tell if my video card is screwed up also and would need to be replaced. Any help to solving this problem would be great.

 

No great solutions :confused, but just to keep this bubbling along:
It would seem odd that you would need a different power supply, seeing a less powerful one used to work. Perhaps there is some other problem afoot. All connections good (graphics card well inserted and clear of dust?) and all cables and cords in good condition? You might even try plugging in to a different power point in the house.
As for the video/TV problem, have you tried disconnecting the TV and see if the monitor works?
In fact, it might be a good idea to disconnect all peripherals, then connect one at a time and see if you get a good boot each time, or at all.
Have you checked your drivers - esp for the graphics card?

 

I have tried to see if the monitor would work without the TV's DVI cord plugged into the graphics card, but still no go. I'll open up the case and reinsert the graphics card, and replug in every power supply cord to be sure everything's good there, but I don't have much hope there because if the graphics card were loose, then I doubt I'd have any video being sent through it to my TV.

 

so, safe mode works, and normal mode doesn't?

What if you uninstalled the video drivers, boot back into normal mode and re-install the drivers? Or perhaps updated drivers?

 

First off I tried to install the new drivers and got an error message (see attachment 1). I have since tried to find out as much as could be wrong with the video card as I could, so I made a file of dxdiag (see attachment 2), ran the nVIDIA PhysX tool in Contol Panel (see attachment 3), and then for fun I clicked Add Hardware where it said there was a video controller that needed to be installed (see attachment 4).

After all this, I opened my case, moved and rezip-tied a power cord that was somewhat close to the video card, removed the video card carefully and then reinserted it, and then removed and replaced the 4 pin power cord that attaches to the motherboard, and then the fun really began. At first I booted into safe mode as normal, and was met with a 640x480 display instead of the 1024x768 I wsa used to. I was also met with a found new hardware screen for the video controller, similar to what I found when I clicked Add New Hardware before. I closed it out, went to install the drivers, and came up with the same error message I found before. I restarted the computer, decided to see what would happen if I booted into normal mode, and while still displaying only on the TV (I haven't plugged in the monitor cord just yet), the display didn't disappear at the login screen as before.

I logged in as normal, switched the display back to 1024x768 successfully, and then retried installing the drivers, which completed this time. After restarting, my computer appeared to be working as normally as I could ask for. The video card was recognized, I booted into normal mode with no problems, and I managed to get the monitor working. Even the sound works just fine now.

I'm not exactly sure what happened with the video card and why it wasn't working. My best bet is the cord that was close to the video card might have been sitting on top of the card while the case was standing upright and that likely would have caused a problem to make me think I had a damaged video card, but I guess at this point I'll never know. Thank you guys for your help, many thanks for the both of you.

 

Excellent that you got it sorted. Good work!
And thanks for teh feedback.