I wish I didn’t need anyone to pick out the things but besides the more ram/hard drive space mentality I really don’t know what’s best
The tower I have is a full size., I am pretty sure its a Dell workstation. The ‘pc guy’ in the ME department gave it to me, its a few years old. I can get the specs of it, but I tired to hook up both of my large monitors and I derped something. He gave me a different video card and it still didn’t fix anything. I suppose I can swing a little more if it’s really worth it
If you bought all the crap I would give you a run down on how to build it and moreover what parts you would wanna get and what’s upgradable in the future for your computer but you are quite a distance from me lmk or pm me for further discussion
This is true not to mention most branded computers have the front power and rest buttons and led HDd lights on a block that’s a direct plug in instead of separate little blocks designated for each thing like power reset led hdd
Takes some pics of the computer and give us the model number along with right click my computer and go to properties that will tell us CPU type speed and how much memory, video card wise right click the destop on a blank spot (not on a icon) and go to properties and it should be the advanced tab to tell us what video card you have, how are you trying to plug the monitors in with VGA, dvi, hdmi, display port? What are the supporting ports on the monitors?
The computer doesnt display anything when I turn in on. Tried a ‘different’ video card with no results. It happened after I tried to use both video outputs.
Here are pics, I can’t find any distinguishable part numbers.
It ran ok before I derped it with dual monitors, I just couldn’t get it to recognize my 500gb HD.
-Has 4 sata ports (2+2 for raid), room for 4 hd’s, 4 dvd drives, 5 of the yellow expansion ports, 350w antec PSU, and 4 RAM slots.
edit: it’s an Antec case. I found “Antec Design” stamped on the bottom
No. If I remember correctly I plugged both in and it went blank. and/or blue screen first. I can’t remember as it was a couple months ago. I got another video card and plugged it in and still didn’t get anything (just used one monitor that time)
Are you sure the monitor and cable you’re using works? If yes and also a known good card didn’t work it’s probably the slot on the mainboard got fried.
You didn’t do the swap on a shag carpet right? LOL
Power was off and computer was unplugged when you swapped right?
Fried would seem odd but possible.
Not a bad idea, def worth a shot. With what he said he did though I would be surprised if it was a bios issue. I’ve seen stranger things of course.
Any beeps upon start up?
I am using both monitors hooked up to my laptop right now. and yes, everything was powered off and un-plugged. I’ll hook it back up and try again just to be sure.
its a asus motherboard, im see if it says asus something under the video card port or inbetween the memmory or cpu slot their should me a model number, it will say asus …, also looks like you have a agp video card slot i might note, it looks like a custom built pc with a antec server case. i can’t tell what the cpu is but from me guessing it has to be a pentium 4 or a socket 462 amd of some sort.
tradersbase is right, you will need to reset the bios if the screen resolution is incorrect should refresh it if its not displaying a picture during the post (power on self test)
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could be a issue with the card being 2x and maybe not 4x/8x or the bios is set to pci video slot and not agp, i would reset the bios like lz is suggesting
LZ was the one that suggested he pull the battery…I can’t take credit for that idea.
If the card was working till he plugged a 2nd screen in then it’s not gonna be a bus speed issue.
Everything is back to as it was before I plugged in the second monitor, nothing happens on the monitor when I turn the computer on. The cpu fans turn on, the hard drive spins up, etc., just no video out put. This video card has not had two monitors plugged into it, I swapped it from an identical unit.
The computer is an old ME computer lab system. I doubt its ‘custom’ aside from a bulk custom order. I’ll get a p/n from the board tonight. Either way, is this case/psu good to keep for an upgrade? I would just get a new mother board, video card, lots of rams, and maybe a ssd for the os. (I still have the 500gb drive)
I’ll try that tonight too
no beeps that didn’t seem normal, if any. I’ll pay attention to that next time
No…The case may be made by Antec, but if it’s custom designed for Dell you’ll run into problems. If you have a p/n for the case then you could verify if it’s proprietary or not. A 350w PSU is bottom of the barrel in terms of output. If someone was building a base model computer I’d recommend 500-600w minimum. If you want to “future-proof” yourself, I’d look for a 750w or better, modular PSU.
So when the second monitor is plugged in, does anything show up on the first monitor on boot? Do you atleast get a BIOS screen?
