Russ Gilbert said:
It is a Duro 400 watt power supply. I've read some
threads that Duro is a very bad power supply, causing
damage on people's computer.
The docs on the mb say I should have at least 250w.
I would guess the agp geforce 4 mx 440 draws a fair
amount of current,
Duro is so bad that it makes Powmax (Leadman, Raidmax) look like high
quality in comparison, and it wouldn't surprise me if the protection
circuitry that prevents excessive voltage or current was left out.
Since this is a ready-built computer and you had been experiencing
problems with it from the very beginning, why won't the shop that sold
it to you replace or repair it under warranty? If they won't, then I
suggest that you write to your credit card company because you may be
able to get at least a partial refund even though the normal 60-day
legal protection period has expired, because that limit doesn't always
apply, and the parent companies for most credit cards extend
protection to a whole year.
The computers I've tried would default to whatever video card was
installed,
PCI or AGP, whether or not the BIOS was set to use AGP. But I
wouldn't risk ruining a PCI card until I knew that it wouldn't be
damaged as well.
You should test the power supply without anything attached to it by
shorting its green and black wires together with a bent paperclip).
If this doesn't make the supply's fan spin, try attaching a 10-20 ohm
resistor, rated for at least 10 watts, between any pair of red and
black wires (you may have to remove the paperclip first). If the fan
still shows no signs of life, then the supply is probably bad. But if
the fan does spin, measure the voltages with a meter, black probe to
ground (black wire), red probe to a red wire for +5V, yellow wire for
+12V, orange or brown wire for +3.3V. The purple wire should have +5V
on it as long as the supply is plugged into the AC and any switch on
the rear is turned on. Except for the latter, the voltages may be off
by over 10% because of the lack of any load. A load can be provided
by a motherboard, but you risk damaging it if the power supply puts
out too much voltage. A power supply tester is not a very good
investment because it won't tell you if the voltages are within normal
specification, and it won't provide much of a load.
I can't check the memory with the memtest86.com checker until
I can get a display going.
If only the display is bad, you actually can still use Memtest86
because it sends out information over the serial cable, so another
computer connected with a null modem cable and running something like
Hyperterminal (or an old DOS-based program, like Telix) could display
the results.
