I think I broke it...

[Etaoin]

Hiyas -
I've got a question for all you computer savy folks. A while ago, I got a wild hair up my hiney and installed an additional video card in what is now my hubby's PC. Immediately following the installation, the computer would ramdomly lock up for no apparent reason. I took the entire thing to my friendly neighborhood computer store that was used to fixing my oopses. They determined the problem was that the integrated video card was conflicting with the new one and somehow disabled the integrated card. Unfortunately this hasn't fixed the problem. So, I'm hoping to take out the second card and make it all go back to "before". Is this something that I can do or should I find a new "friendly neighborhood computer store"?
Thank ya bunches!
Kat

[[AK]Hylander]

You should be able to remove it, and re-activate your integrated video. Your repair shop should have disabled the integrated video via the bios setup... which would have removed the conflict with the card you installed.

To return to that setup, simply uninstall that video card and then boot into the BIOS and re-activate the integrated video. If you aren't comfortable doing that, then you might need to take it to a shop to have them do it for you. It's really not that hard, but I understand people are not comfortable messing with those things.

Not knowing your configuration, it should have been easy enough for them to configure your pc with both video cards functioning, and setting the priority for which is primary, secondary, etc. But I have never done that with integrated video before.

If they properly disabled the integrated video in the BIOS, then that shouldn't be a conflict with your new video card. Had you tried updating to the latest drivers versions to see if that helped with the problem? When you say it locked up, was it during any certain types of activities like 3D rendering / DirectX applications... or even when just browsing the Internet, etc?

[[AK]Bribo]

The enabling/disabling of on-board video is usually done in the BIOS of the PC. When your PC first boots you should see something on your screen like "Hit DEL to load BIOS settings". If you don't see something like that (it can go by pretty quick) then check the manual that came with your motherboard.

Once the BIOS menus are present look for a setting in there for on-board video. Set it to Enabled. Then Save and Exit. You can now try hooking up a monitor to the on-board video out and see if it works.

If it does then you can power down the PC and remove the vid card.

DISCLAIMER: If this doesn't work don't blame me! I'm not a PC expert but I play one on TV!

[Etaoin]

Well ya'll, 6 months later I finally did it! Everytime we took the computer somewhere we were told that something else that just happened to be really expensive was broken. After listening to my husband curse for the millionth time this morning, I finally took your directions and took the darn video card out and guess what?! The computer still works!!!

Only time will tell if this stops the system from locking up every 10 minutes but I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your advice!

Thanks Bunches!!