Through a Video Card, Darkly

[elfs]

My desktop died this afternoon. It doesn't boot, and when it makes it past POST it gives one long beep and three short beeps. I looked this up and it means No Video Card.

I pulled out the video card, an old GeForce 4 TI4200 8x AGP w/128MB (looking at the websites, I can see that it goes now for an average of $40). There are burn marks on the fan! It collected so much dust that it simply ceased to spin and burned out. The glue on the label is dried out from the heat and flaking off.

Yech. I hope just replacing it is sufficient. If its burnout caused deeper problems, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

Comments

[elfs.livejournal.com]

See, that's what has me worried. Although the video card is obviously and visibly damaged, it only makes it past POST some of the time; sometimes, it just shuts down immediately. When Omaha bought this MB for me, it was advertised as a "Linux Friendly Gamer's MB", which means that it's very picky about having something in its AGP slot, and has no on-board video (why bother when any gamer worth his salt will go buy the hottest video card he can find?).