Recyling my old PC into a media centre

Hi I need some advice in transforming my old AGP pc into a media centre. When I am trying to connect it to my Sony Bravia HD TV, the BIOS screen loads up but as soon as it gets through that it loses the image and states it is out of range. I believe this due to the refresh rate of my Graphics card (an old skool PNY Geforce 6600 GT). Now is it better to get a new Graphics card or is there a way to charge the refresh rates and if so what is the best rate to change it too? Any advice you can give will be greatly received.

Hey robst, You're right, the refresh rate may cause you to get the "Out of Range" error from your TV. In addition to refresh rate, the wrong resolution may also prompt this type of error. In essence, your hardware is not to blame and changing it won't make much of a difference. The problem lies directly with Windows. Usually, Windows Vista or 7 tends to auto detect the display and adjust the screen size accordingly. This is assuming that you're using a DVI cable to connect your TV to your Graphics Card, and not the S-Video cable. I'm also not completely sure whether XP detects your optimal screen resolution as Vista or 7 does. It's been a while since I've owned an XP machine, so I can't really check. What I can suggest you do is try using your onboard graphics chip. Simply turn your machine off, unscrew the monitor cable and plug it into the corresponding VGA slot on the back. (And not back into the graphics card, obviously). This may prompt your machine to use a different resolution which your TV may recognise. If that works, you should be able to change the desktop resolution to the native size for your TV. Depending on the size of the TV, this could range from 1280x800 to 1920x1080. Just check your TV manual and see what it says. If none of that works, you could always try plugging the graphics card into a normal PC monitor and adjusting the resolution to match your TV's from there. Hope that helps, Nahumi