Hi everyone; I just disabled my onboard i810 graphics and installed my PNY geforce2 mx 400 64mb sdr pci card in my HP 6746c pavillion (Trigem Cognac mobo). I than fliped on the power and turned on the monitor. The computer made a few beeps and the light flashed a few times and I could hear all the fans going but the screen was black. I had it pluged into the video card and I tried taking the card out and putting it back in the same slot(only have 3pci and 2 are being used )and still nothing on the screen. Could this because by lack of power as the psu says it is only 90watts?( Another place HP saved on money hard to believe this system cost $2000 cdn 2.5 years ago) Or would it be more likely a compatability issue? Or could it just be this peice of HP sh**t not being able to be upgraded( HP's are so upgradable according to their advertising)(not)?:furious:

What no one can help?

Those beeps you heard were a beep code that tells you what is wrong do you get them every time you boot if so how many and in what sequence. Have you tried the video card in another pc or a new power supply in your pc

Thanks for answering my post zachariah. I know the card is good because I took it out of a freinds pc and it worked fine there. When I turn on the computer with the card installed I get 2 beeps then a pause of about 5 or 6 secs than a single beep. Everything in the case sounds like its working(fans,harddrive) but nothing to the monitor. Ususally when I turn on the monitor when the PC is on it makes a load noise like an old tv set, but with the card in the only way you can tell that you turn on the monitor is that the light is on. I think that it is the fact that I only have a 90 watt psu but I would like to be sure before I start throughing to much $ into this quickly growing obsolete m/c.

I'll go and dig up a hardwre book with the beep codes and see if I can interpret yours. By the way do you know which bios you are using

are the beeps long or short I just found out I really need to know which bios you are using before I can figure it out

PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0 version 2.02 is what it says at the setup screen.

I think it was 2 short beeps then a pause then another short beep. They are all the same anyway, so maybe look them up as all short and all long. And we can rule out which doesn't apply.

Hey zachariah are you still with me?

have you tried moving your card into another slot,i know you said you haven't spare one, but you could remove something just to check .also make sure you press it in firmly.

Well I don't use the fax modem so I could remove that and try it in that slot. Will I have to uninstall the drivers for the modem just to stick the card in and try it?

no dont uninstall the drivers

ok I'll give it a whirl.

I just went through the whole process again but installed in the other pci slot and had the same results.
Zachariah if you are still lookig for those mobo codes the beeps are as follows: 1 long beep followed by 2 short beeps the in about 10-12 sec 1more short beep.

GeForce2 MX400-PCI Video Card MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:
IBM® PC or 100% Compatible
Intel Pentium®II, AMD-K6-2® class processor or higher
32MB of RAM
250watt Power supply (300watt recommended for gamers)
An Available PCI bus slot
CD-ROM Drive
10MB available hard disk space (50 MB for full installation)
Windows® 95 OSR2, 98 or higher, ME, 2000, XP, NT with service pack 5 or 6, Linux OS
Question?

3) I have installed my video card and all I get is a blank screen – what is wrong?




Answer

Please verify that your power supply is 300 watts or greater. Also verify that the AGP slot on your system’s motherboard is a 2.0 compliant slot. A 1.0 slot will not allow proper operation of the video card. This information can be obtained from the motherboard manufacturer’s website or from your owner’s manual.



Question?

44) My PC won't POST (doesn't display anything when I switch it on) after I put my GeForce card in. How can I fix it?




Answer

Make sure that the system's power supply is at least 300 watts.
Make sure that your card is firmly seated in the AGP slot, and clean away any dust in the slot or on the card.
Verify that the AGP slot on the motherboard is a 2.0 compliant slot. An AGP 1.0 compliant slot is not sufficient to operate our video card.
Make sure that your processor and RAM are firmly seated - you may have dislodged them when you installed the Video Card.
Try a different monitor. In some rare cases the GeForce simply won't work with a certain monitor. If this is the case, try replacing the GeForce and seeing if that helps.
Try increasing the I/O voltage of your motherboard to 3.4V in your BIOS setup if your BIOS supports it.
Try setting the AGP Driving Value setting in your BIOS setup to EA or FF.
Try installing the latest BIOS update for your motherboard.
Your Video BIOS may be corrupt (this can occasionally occur even on brand new cards). If none of this helps, you may have a defective video card.


I think I might have found the answer myself at the PNY site(who would have thought to look there?). Seems that I do have a power prob my 90 watt psu is a far cry from 250-350watt needed for a Geforce card.

This is remarkable tecnotec... the Nvidia MX400 is a Plug and Play card, and it should work when plugged in...

If this still not works, you should indeed try one of the other slots like sickmanofasia proposed.

Anyway, I think the beeps may have to do with your monitor refresh rate. Enable your old card again, and set the monitor to the lowest refreh rate available. Now try again.

By the way.... i was just wondering... can't you enable both cards at the same time, and just not use the Intel card? (i did the same thing with 2 modems, they work without any trouble)

http://www.ewandew.com/sig/Awiz.gif

i read somewhere that you should put your pci graphics card as close to the center of the motherboard as you can in my computer it was the top one something to do with time

Thanks for the help guys. The teck from PNY emailed me and said that if I went with a 300watt psu that the card would work.