Hello,
I'm helping my cousin with his computer. A few years ago it quit powering on and booting in to Windows Vista correctly. After some troubleshooting and trial and error I removed the Dell Radeon X1300 Pro card that came with the computer and the computer began working again. It's been a while but I think I tried one of my own PCIe cards in the computer and it worked OK. We concluded the Radeon X1300 Pro was the problem. I removed the cover that was on the integrated GPU's port and he used the integrated GPU for a couple years. I think the integrated GPU is an Nvidia GeForce 6100 LE. A few months ago the picture on his monitor began looking strange. The colors are too bright and seem washed out and they become brighter and more washed out the longer the computer is on. Plus, there's some odd small wavy flickering lines or shading on the screen. They were subtle and were unnoticed until I sat down and looked at the screen for a few minutes. The problem isn't the monitor. Or, at least the monitor's hardware isn't malfunctioning. I connected his laptop to the monitor and the picture was OK. The monitor's built-in configuration menus look OK, too. I cleaned the dust out of the computer and suddenly the picture from the GeForce 6100 LE was OK. I thought that was the end of the issue but a couple weeks ago the strange picture returned and this time there isn't a lot of dust in the computer and I haven't been able to fix the picture.
My cousin decided to get a new graphics card to work around whatever is going on with the integrated GeForce 6100 LE. He bought a PNY GeForce GT 610. It is a PCIe 2.0 card. He put it in the computer and it didn't work. I tried doing the same thing and it still didn't work. I tried putting in one of my own PCIe graphics cards that I know works and it didn't work in his computer. By "not working" I mean the motherboard behaves as if the card is not in the slot. There is power going to the card. At least the fan on it works. When I plugged the DVI cable from the monitor in to the card the monitor switched to DVI input and went in to power save mode. Though it should have been displaying POST and then the Windows Vista desktop. Windows doesn't detect anything new when the card is installed. The BIOS setup menu doesn't show the card is installed. While I was trying to get the new graphics card to work some of the things I tried was uninstalling the Nvidia driver and resetting the CMOS by using the jumper on the motherboard. I tried running Dell's built-in diagnostic program accessed through the F12 boot menu. It didn't find anything wrong with the motherboard and graphics system however it only tested the integrated graphics.
The BIOS is version 1.1.11. Is there an option in its settings to disable/enable the PCIe X16 slot? If there is then I didn't see it. I've heard some computers have an option like that but I haven't personally seen it on any computer yet. Any suggestions for what I could try to either fix the picture coming from the GeForce 6100 LE or coax the motherboard in to working with the GeForce GT 610? This may be unnecessary for fixing this problem but is there some kind of diagnostic card that can check the PCIe slot? Personally, I've never liked the nonspecific answer "the motherboard is bad". I've always wanted to know exactly what it is on the motherboard that isn't working. I've been thinking about buying some more tools for troubleshooting motherboard issues.
