My Dell 5150 Computer froze last night and when I restarted it I now have nothing going through to the monitor. Obviously I cannot see what exactly is happening so can't state for certain whether the ciomputer is actually starting the BIOS as normal or not. It sounds normal enough with lights coming on for the disk drives etc. I am wondering how likely it is that it is just the PCI Express graphics card that has died and whether this would stop the normal bootup? Is there any way to determine whether it is the card or the motherboard slot that has gone other than buying another card? I don't have access to a spare card.

Answer:
hi neil

woh,dont panic,allthough graphic cards sometimes do pack up this is rare and there could be many other reasons why your p.c isnt booting this day

my first check would be to replace the cmos retention battery,this is a small cell like battery on your motherboard like this:(http://www.infopackets.com/graphics/cmos…

to replace this turn off your p.c and press the clip at the side of the battery gently and the cmos battery will pop out,then carefully remove it and place a new cmos battery in its place,however you will need to reset the bios settings such as time and date and also any sata /hardware configurations,then remember to save and exit set up to save the changes to the cmos battery

also do a complete check of all the power connectors inside the case,and also check the front panel power connectors,these are the leads that basically power up your p.c,you can find a guide for this in your p.c/motherboard manual

also check the vga lead from your monitor,it might be some of the pins on the vga lead may be bent,if they’re use a pair of tweezers to straighten the pins back into place

also if the cmos battery has died then you will also have to set the “init display first” option in the bios(advanced chipset features),since this is the setting responsible for deciding which display device to use when booting up,and in your case it needs to be “pci-express” or if thats not there use “pci”,and again remember to save any changes before leaving set-up

you’ve said you can hear the hard drive and cd-roms so this cancels out a power supply issue however power supplys can become faulty and still power up some hardware and not others

i personally think its your cmos battery so give this a go and let me know if you have any problems

good luck neil !

Answer:
yes my dad's did that and he’d to purchase a new card

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/ind…