Installing graphics/ sound card.

[Chas Uno]

Well, this nightmare of a newer computer is still giving me grief.

It's a Packard Bell 'Club 40' (?) with an Intel Celeron processor running at 600 mhz with onboard graphics and sound. I tried running some of my game emulators but some of them don't like the onboard sound card and others crashed. They worked fine, if a little slow, on my older computer.

So I pulled out the Matrox Mystique PCI graphics card from my old PC, stuck it in and the PC booted up as normal. It recognised the card and installed 'New Hardware' without problems. Then it asked to restart the PC for the changes to take effect.

This I did, and all is fine. The new card shows up as installed and working in Device Manager.

However, when I connect the monitor to the new graphics card and boot up, it seems to work ok but then freezes on the 'Windows is starting up' screen. The hard disc is still churning away, but nothing changes on screen. When I connect the monitor to the original monitor port it works fine and shows the fully booted up screens and works as before. Swapping back to the Matrox graphics card still shows the 'Windows is starting up' screen

So what do I need to do to get the Matrox card to work properly? Do I need to disable the onboard display adaptor? I tried going to the Matrox site but as per usual it seems my hardware is too old and they no longer offer any support for it

I also want to install my old sound card, a Creative Soundblaster though I'm not sure of the model. It's old though! However, if it's going to cause the same problems as the graphics card then I probably won't bother and will wait until I afford a better computer...

Until then, any advice?

 

[Si]

Disable the onboard gfx and reboot. The PCI card should then be used by Windows.

 

[Chas Uno]

Cheers for that Si, and I did think of doing that. But what happens if it doesn't work properly, and then I can't see anything on the screen to change the settings back? That's why I didn't do it, though I guess safe mode might still work?

 

[Si]

Actually thats a good question. The reason for the "hang" isn't because the card has an issue, it's usually because Windows is using another gfx card/chipset. I'd think it would work fine in safe mode incase of it screwing up but really aren't sure without physically trying.

Go into display properties (right click on desktop), click settings tab. Go into advanced and see which adaptor it's using at the moment. Hopefully if the gfx and onboard are both working, Windows should give you the option to select either.

 

[Trancendental]

What happened is your main board was using your attached card then switching to the on board card half way through, maybe the board or windows doing this.

If you got instructions there may be jumpers on the board to disable the card or any on board equipment.

Disable on board card and all shuold be fine.

If you have no pic after then remove the attached card and you should be able to just continue using your on board card.

 

[Chas Uno]

Cheers Si and Trans! Changed the settings as suggested and it works now.

Only problem is that my PC seems to running slow and is still struggling with the game emulators. Some of them worked ok on my old PC, which was only a Pentium 2 running at 233mhz with 64mb ram, and this newer machine is an Intel Celeron running at 600 mhz with 128mb ram. Maybe Windows 2000 slows it down as the old machine was running Windows 98?

I want to play my games!

I'm now thinking I should upgrade my processor to a faster one. How do I know which processor is suitable for my machine? There's loads on Ebay going for not very much :idea:

 

[Stu DemonD]

Any idea what make/model/revision the motherboard is?

 

[Chas Uno]

Any idea what make/model/revision the motherboard is?

I need to find out, and I need to know HOW to find out! Will start another thread as I think this one is complete now!

 

[Stu DemonD]

Try this utility:

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php