I either need a new ram stick, or video card

[tomtoms]

I am not gonna lie. I have little background knowledge of the insides of a computer. but thats what I am interested in. My brother and law brought me over an old HP pavilion model a705w. He knows I like to mess with computers and fix them. I took a look at this and he said it was completely broke. Which was wrong. I tested the monitor on my other PC and it worked fine, so I eleminated the possibility of it being the monitor. The problem is the monitor isn't getting the signal. The computer powers up and I see and hear all the fans spinning up properly. the blue power button comes on like it should. I tried to take the ram stick out and put it back. That didn't work. I know I put it back in properly. So my best guess is that either the video card is broke. or the ram is. And I know i have an internal graphics card but I can install a pci. So what I wanted to know was if I installed a pci graphics card would it be detected? and I also wanted to know if I need a new stick of ram. Let me know what would be the best option to do. I am not looking to make it fancy. just want to make it run properly.

 

[Celery]

Does the motherboard have a speaker on it? If you boot up the PC without the memory you should get the error beeps (the codes is dependent on the brand).

One beep means all system ok and more than one beeps indicates errors.

Does the motherboard have an onboard video port? You can try that if possible, otherwise get another video card to try out.

 

[tomtoms]

Does the motherboard have a speaker on it? If you boot up the PC without the memory you should get the error beeps (the codes is dependent on the brand).

One beep means all system ok and more than one beeps indicates errors.

Does the motherboard have an onboard video port? You can try that if possible, otherwise get another video card to try out.

I just started it and heard one beep. I'm not sure if the mother board does but I know that the video card is integrated into mother board

 

[Celery]

Ok, one beep means all is ok. So it is onboard video not video card thus the confusion. Since you can't get the video you can't see the BIOS screen to check for configs.

The onboard video may be out or missing jumpers (a shot in the dark here) so what you can do is to download a manual for the PC and check for configs on video (BIOS or jumpers) otherwise you'd have to get an AGP video card to try out.