My Comp, should I save or should I replace?

[Fascinate]

Make sure your video card is plugged in completely and the power cable into it as well. It should work fine on either dvi port on the card, but i guess you can try both.

[Aviditas]

that's where you lose me unfortunately. When you say make sure those are unplugged im assuming your talking about my GeForce GTX 550 thing. And the small wires coming out of it and what not. What am I making sure they're plugged into? Because wires seem to be going to random places. If you want I can take another picture or to if you're willing to help. I really do appreciate all you've done. At least I know its all staying on and good. Now its just a monitor issue and Id hate to keep bothering you.

[Fascinate]

Yep the 550ti, just make sure the fan is spinning and the cable on the back of the card near the top is plugged in all the way. No pics needed.

[Aviditas]

I just swapped to the other dvi port and then checked the fan. It looks like everything is plugged in and running, there was only one cord plugged into that card so I'm assuming that was what is powering everything. But the no VGA cable message came up again and doesnt seem to be showing anything

[Fascinate]

Hmm very odd indeed. Just make sure your monitor isnt on a different source, all i can think of right now.

[Aviditas]

what do you mean by different source? I'm assuming the VGA/DVI/HDMI settings? (Granted my monitor can't take HDMI apparently) But other then that wasnt sure, I found 4 buttons on the side, was trying to figure out what they did but nothing happened when everything was plugged in and I hit them.

[Fascinate]

Like in the menu, there would be options for inputs. Make sure its on DVI.

[Aviditas]

Hmm, theres nothing showing when I press them but I'll try turning it all off except for the monitor and see if one of them is an options menu

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it's showing up on my monitor now. there was an option to change it but I didn't see it till I experiemented with all the buttons. I'm going to plug my keyboard and mouse in and try to see if it all sets up normally.

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Fascinate I don't know how to thank you, I truly don't It loaded up fine. there's no issue apparently except for it being slow, which i am assuming is from the ram being way below what I last saw it load up with. It's working perfectly and basically I just need to replace the ram and cosmetically find a prettier case. I can't thank you enough. I got introuble googling everything I could while at work and you were able to help me out easily. I can't offer much but I have a few humble bundle codes that recently came out for games. If theres anything I can do seriously please ask. You saved me a ton of money and if I just want those few upgrades and then can choose from there I will take that in a heartbeat. Just lead me know please

[Fascinate]

Nice let us know if you get stuff working.

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Fascinate I don't know how to thank you, I truly don't It loaded up fine. there's no issue apparently except for it being slow, which i am assuming is from the ram being way below what I last saw it load up with. It's working perfectly and basically I just need to replace the ram and cosmetically find a prettier case. I can't thank you enough. I got introuble googling everything I could while at work and you were able to help me out easily. I can't offer much but I have a few humble bundle codes that recently came out for games. If theres anything I can do seriously please ask. You saved me a ton of money and if I just want those few upgrades and then can choose from there I will take that in a heartbeat. Just lead me know please

Thats awesome, and dont be silly thats what forums are for lol! Thanks is enough.

Also about it being slow, im sure your ram is fine because the system boots now (ram doesent get slow over time, its just good or bad). What i suggest is eventually do a reinstall of windows 7, just do some research at your own leisure on how about doing that, lots of good articles and youtube videos about that.

[Aviditas]

It all appears to be working. I don't have internet set up (been using the neighbors wifi for my labtop to talk on my labtop. But basically it seems to be showing everything I previously had fine. I'm not sure how much I can test it. But its sitting stable at the load screen, except for the curse client load menu frozen because theres no internet acess

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And I had another question, as much as I hate to ask because you've done so much already. When I buy new ram would I just put those sticks in the black slots as I did with the ones I had to swap now? Or is it possible they switch depending on what the stick is. I don't want to break them testing it out

[Fascinate]

Honestly id keep them now unless you find yourself with not enough capacity. Once you format your PC with a fresh install of windows 7 your PC will literally feel brand new again, it just takes a bit of time saving the stuff you need to save on a usb stick and finding the drivers online.

[Aviditas]

Are you sure? Im only asking because I wanted to regardless reinstall Windows 7 and basically just keep my addons folders for my games haha. But I know with only the 3gs of 6-7 year old ram compared to what is out now I want to make sure everything is all set regardless. The original reason I swapped to one of his 4 gig sticks was because I tried playing minecraft and kept running into a physical memory error that he explained was a ram thing. So I want to be able to keep playing that and be safe with everything for the next few months. Besides that I think I will reinstall windows again regardless as long as I don't need to pay for it. I got a digital upgrade and wasn't sure if a system wipe would let me keep that or if i needed it somewhere else (CD, USB, etc)

[Fascinate]

Ya for now just keep your ram, 3gb's is enough for basically anything right now unless your like opening two games at once. RAM will not make your PC faster, i only suggested it originally because we thought it was broken. The other reason i say keep your ram is because with your motherboard it prefers to have 3 sticks in it at once, two sticks will work fine but that mobo is made to run with triple channel memory (3 sticks instead of two) and that is what you have now. Ram hasnt gotten faster very much over the years, i saw a test recently and ddr2 800 was nearly as fast as ddr3 2100 ram, and i assume your ram is either ddr3 1066 or ddr3 1333.

[Aviditas]

I wouldn't know without looking at it haha, unless theres something I can type now that my comp actually works!

All i knew is that it was the stock ram that came with a desktop bought in store years ago and thats why I assumed it would be good to replace. If not then that works as well :P Seriously though Fascinate I can't thank you enough

[Fascinate]

You can download a program called CPU-Z

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

Click on setup 1.67.1 english.

Once you install it there will be a tab called memory, click on that it report back what it says for memory type (ddr2 or ddr3) and then Dram frequency (should say either 567mhz or 667).

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Oh ya you have no internet, its all good you can check at a later date. But it dont really matter either way was just curious.

[Aviditas]

I Plan on checking that next week when I get paid (turn on internet and what not) Is there a certain to look for? I saw 2 different options for each thing you listed. I wasn't sure if that would effect the ram I wanted to buy orginally or if theres something else to look at, or even then if there is no need to buy anything else

[Fascinate]

You will just click on the tab that says memory and see if its ddr2 or ddr3 and what speed its running at.

Personally id just do a fresh install of the OS and see how your PC runs first before thinking about upgrades.

[Aviditas]

I'll definitely do that then

[Fascinate]

Awesome, at least the PC does not turn off randomly now : )

If you do plan on reinstalling windows at some point in time make sure to read up on it or watch a video, there is generally an order on when to install what drivers (and im guessing you lost motherboard disk, in that case you would need to download them on a different PC and put on a disc or usb stick so you can get on the internet for the other drivers).

Not sure if you have done a re-install before but, just a heads up : )

[Aviditas]

I've never done one before but after this headache I'll be researching everything before I do anything. Eventually I'd like to build one completely on my own but I'm a long way from that. I will get there though, and I wont give up on my current rig haha. I'll keep working on it to get it perfect, regardless of the walls of text I sort through before then :P