please help; computer graphic-card snafu

[Ginevive]

OK.. Mark bought a new graphics card for the computer (an HP bought last year).. so he installed it.. now our computer is randomly restarting itself.. freezin up.. getting this weird pixellated thing where it look like it is raining colored pixels on a black background.. he installed it all as he was supposed to.. anyone have any ideas here? I am about ti go insane, and I will be lucky if I am even allowed to type this whole thing before this &^%$$ thing resets itself again... please help!! The requirements on the box for the card are all well within our computer's reach.. argh!

[iceman25]

Is it an AGP or a PCI express card? Is it firmly seated in the socket? Wiggle it gently and make sure that there is no movement. Have you checked ur bios settings?(provided that hp gives you an option of course). Try reinstalling the drivers for it and see if that solves the problem.

[Ginevive]

PCI express.. it was working great the first day, I was playing Quake 4 with it and the graphics were just killer.. We can check the Bios settings; Mark had to set it to ignore the factory card b/c I guess you can't remove that.. argh

[SarahMB]

You might be having a driver conflict.

[iceman25]

If you disabled the "built in" card, did you also uninstall it from the OS? I don't think that it would necessarily cause any conflicts, but one never knows.

[Smulkin]

Also might be memory issues - and if it is a hungry newer card it could be milking your power supply dry. Are you still using the factory HP power supply? Also which card is it?

I built 4 PCIe gaming rigs over christmas and ran into a few hiccups.

[Ginevive]

He disabled the original card.. it does not appear that the new card is loose at all.. it does seem almost like the computer is starving for power really. the name of the card is Radeon X 1600 pro. Any more thoughts?

[Smulkin]

How many watts is the power supply? Less than 400W might be a problem - and the stock supplies in a lot of pc's leave a lot to be desired.

[iceman25]

What model HP is it?...and ditto on the power supply thing. I built a dual-core monster for my friend last week and the minimum power supply used was 450watts.

[Chase13]

It would be helpfull if you posted all of the specs for your computer. Also, what screen resolution are you at and what color bit are you using. Make sure you get the drivers from the vendor website. its always a better option to ensure the most updated drivers are installed. Try going into Device Manager and seeing if there are any problems because it could be a resource conflict with old drivers or something like that.