Graphics Card?

I recently got a new video card for my computer to be able to play more of the recent games out on the market. I installed the card today and everything seemed to be okay until I tried to play one of the games I played before I got the card. Now, my computer doesn't have an AGP slot so this card is a PCI card if that helps any way. Before putting the card in, I went into the Device Manager and disabled the onboard graphics. It prompted me to restart my computer, so I clicked yes. Before I allowed the computer to start back up, I unplugged my whole system and continued to install my card. What I did to install it was open up my computer and insert the card into one of the available PCI slots, close my computer, and restart after plugging everything back in. My computer started as normal except for the display which was set back to the default I'm guessing of 800x600 and 16-bit color. In the bottom right corner, some bubbles popped up showing that my computer recognized the new hardware and it installed some things. Then, I put the drivers CD into my DVD drive and installed the drivers for the card that I could. I then proceeded to change my display back to the way I'm accustomed to with 1024x768 and 32-bit color. That is when I tried to play Counter-Strike over Steam, but it said I was offline. Also, Netscape wasn't working so I was very skeptical. Then, I tried Internet Explorer and I was able to visit websites like normal. I decided to see if the new hardware only affected Netscape and Steam by trying out another game. I couldn't connect on that game either. I don't know if this is exactly your expertise, but if you could give it a try, I'd be very grateful.

What kind of card is it..? You may need to update DirectX first along with making sure the version of DirectX your running is compatible with card. What you need to do after your check your DirectX compatibility is go to device manager and find your newly installed card … right click on it and uninstall it. Then go to add/remove programs and uninstall everything related to that card you can find. afterwards .. reboot .. taking the card OUT of computer. Once back to desktop, then put the driver cd in and install the drivers and whatever software you need to do so per cards instructions. Now go back and disable your integrated video and then reboot. Put the new card in comp this time and then while booting go in to BIOS and find your "primary display" settings and set it to PCI… save all settings… and exit BIOS.. now the comp should boot up… find the card… install the drivers and you should be good to go

The video card is a PowerColor9250 card powered by Radeon9250. It's a PCI interface card, has 256 MB and 128 bit, and says DirectX 8.1. I followed your instructions until I got to the part where I had to reboot my computer without the video card in it. When it loaded up, I checked the Device Manager and it showed that the onboard graphics were there, but not enabled so I decided to leave it like that. I inserted my drivers CD that came with the video card, but it said, "No hardware device found! Please check your hardware card first or Browse the CD directory for the right driver to install!" I tried searching the CD directory, but whenever I ran an application it came up with the same exact message. So, I decided to put the video card back in and start back up my computer since it seemed the CD didn't want to cooperate without it in first. I started it up and got to the CD's menu with two choices of "Display Adapter Driver Setup" and "Catalyst Control Center Setup". I installed everything on the first option, but when I got to the second option, it came up with a message saying, "Proper ATI Hardware not detected. This installation cannot be completed." There was also an installation button for DirectX 9 which took about a second to complete as I believe I had installed DirectX 9 sometime before. So, I decided to reboot my computer since I had to do it anyway after installing the display adapter drivers and remembered I hadn't gone into the bios. When I restarted my computer, I pressed F1 (the Help button displayed on setup) to bring up the menu. I only saw one thing that looked like it was what I was supposed to be looking for with "Primary Display" and that was "Primary Video Adapter". Strange thing is that it was already set to "[PCI]" so I just left it as it was and continued the reboot. I finally got to my desktop and decided to try the option on the drivers CD which had not worked previously. When I clicked on it, it came up with the same message after going through the InstallShield process like it did before. I changed my display to 1024x768 and 32-bit color like I'm accustomed to and tried to play Steam again. It didn't work just like before and Netscape cannot connect to websites even though Internet Explorer still can. Here's a list of the bios and their settings I wrote down that seemed like they were the only ones that would pertain to this sort of thing: Plug and Play OS [Yes] Reset Configuration Data [No] Onboard Video Memory [8 MB] Primary Video Adapter [PCI] PS/2 Mouse [Auto] USB Legacy Mode Support [Auto] Superior Password [Enter] User Password [Enter] Local Bus IDE Adapter [Both] Onboard LAN [Enabled] Onboard Audio [Auto] I don't know what else to say. I discussed this with two of my more experienced with computer parts friends at school today and they suggested to try the bios, but they weren't guaranteed to be the solution. Before following your instructions, I tried the bios to change the video to PCI but it was already set to that like it was after I installed the software.

You know.. I dont know why, but I KEEP ON buying ATI products and I always seem to have a problem installing them. You need to download .NET framework. Do this and check back in one sec.. just got a phone call have to take




Ok sorry bout that.. after you download .NEt framework.. then go toATI's downloads page here and download the Catalyst UNINSTALLER and use it.(you may already have this on your software cd that came with card but its better to get the latest updated one of these) Now.. after you've done that.. and rebooted as it asks (if it asks) then go once more to add/remove and remove/uninstall everyting/anything ATI. Once you've done that.. look on your desktop (or were ever you download files to) and see if theres an executable named dxwebsetup.exe.. I am sure you have been through this but just for the sake of making sure and not having to do all this again.. click on that if its there. DirectX will download the file needed to download directX online.. Being that it took no time to install previously I am wondering if maybe it did at all..? and if so then that wont take but a second..


Now.. you have .NET framework… Freshly updated DirectX… and absolutly nothing ATI installed correct..?
Ok now follow the same steps you did the first time you tried to install card. That should get you going

I followed the steps that you gave and used the cat uninstaller. When I rebooted though, I was prompted to install new hardware which I would assume is the video card. I canceled it because I'm supposed to be getting rid of all ATI products, but my screen froze and didn't go on after that to the desktop. I restarted and installed the Radeon 9250 stuff it prompted me with while having the installation CD in. Hope it was okay to do this. You said after I completed all those steps that I should retry the steps I used when first trying to install the card. Does that mean that I should take the card out too? Should I install everything on the CD that I can too? By the way, I don't know if it's my computer or Internet Explorer but the pages are scrolling down EXTREMELY slow. I can watch the lines move up from the bottom of the screen as new text is displayed below it. Hope this is just temporary until I get everything done with the video card. I also can't locate the dxwebsetup.exe file that I'm going to have to use later. I can't even locate the files from the .Net Framework installation even though I watched the installation of the program. Is there a certain spot I can locate it at because it's not in Program Files or anything.

Disregard that last post. I downloaded the .Net Framework and installed it. Then, I downloaded the latest uninstaller and used it to uninstall almost everything and restarted when it prompted me to after it was done. When my computer loaded up, I went into the Add/Remove Programs and uninstalled the last thing with ATI on it which uninstalled the two drivers for the card itself. It prompted me to restart, but I said no for the time being. I couldn't find where the dxwebsetup.exe was at, so I searched for it on google and downloaded it off Microsoft's website and installed it. After that with those three things done like you said, I restarted my computer. It prompted me with new hardware messages which I installed the video card with yet again. When my desktop finally came up, I installed the stuff on the CD for the upteenth time and restarted it for it to be able to take effect. I still can't use Steam or Netscape right though and I can't see what I did wrong every time. Could the problem lie elsewhere in my computer which could be preventing the video card from functioning to its full potential?

Wow! I don't understand this at all, but I finally figured out how to get Steam and other programs that were useless before working! I'm happy and extremely confused. I turned on my firewall since I usually have it off so I can play games without being interferred with. I even turned it off for startup so that's telling how much I use it. I decided to turn it on today and I decided to search through the support section of steampowered.com (Steam's website) and I found a thread that I thought I could try. It said to go into Display on the Control Panel and into Advanced in the Settings tab. It said then go into the Troubleshooting tab and turn down the notches from full to see if that worked. Well I turned it down to the 3rd notch out of six and Steam worked! I was so happy then, but I wanted to see how many notches I could go up without Steam not being able to work again. Guess what? I got up to six notches again and Steam still worked! I don't understand it at all, but I'm very happy. Maybe it was something to do with security measures and the video card making sure it was fine to access the internet with those programs. I don't know. Anyway, Crow, thank you very much for your support in trying to get my video card up and running! It was greatly appreciated!