My father's computer only has VGA out, but he wants to be able to connect it to his monitor and TV using a splitter, but wants it to go to the TV as HDMI (so DVI to HDMI). I'm not very knowledgeable about hardware so I'm wondering what video card should he get if all he's going to be doing is mostly watching TV/Movies and doing business (word processing and internet) stuff? If you need more info (guessing you will), just list the info you want (and possibly easiest way to find it) and i'll post it up. Thanks in advance!

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 5 2010, 1:41 am by poiuy_qwert.

Need to know if he has a PCI-E x16 slot, if you don't know, get CPU-Z and check the mainboard and graphics tabs, screenshot them, crop so the shot isn't huge, and post them here.

If he has the slot, this card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814261043
Has DVI, VGA, and HDMI, so he doesn't even need a splitter, just the cables to connect with.

Edit: Oh and I'm sure you're aware if you want the computer to display programmed TV/channels/ect. you need a TV tuner. You can use the TV as a normal monitor, but if he isn't watching the shows online or something from a site, he needs a TV tuner.

Edit2: You can also get it here for like 25$: http://3btech.net/panvge8464dd.html However I can't vouch for that site because I've never used it, while Newegg is a household name.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Feb 5 2010, 2:33 am by Excalibur.

Sorry it took so long:

It has the slot you require. Go ahead and buy the card.

Oh crap I forgot to mention that I live in Canada and it seems neither of those places ship here? Any ideas?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 8 2010, 1:49 am by poiuy_qwert.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133303
Just make sure you have 300W power supply. The 8400 on that CA newegg cost alot.

32$ shipped for an 8400GS w/HDMI is not a lot, and its .com not .ca. Unless you mean poiuy is CA.

I doubt he has any less than a 300w. Lowest I've seen even in older PCs was a 250w.

The one you recommend is about double the price of the 8400 (which is Unavailable at newegg.ca)? I don't think my dad would care too much but of course if there is a cheaper card that will fit what he needs that would be nice.

Yeah you probably missed the edit to my post right above his.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125289
I think that is the only 8400 card that has both DVI and HDMI. The 220 gives like much more performance than the 84 though.
I do not really like recommending 64 bit width cards for any purpose.
I remember when I bought an 8500 for like 20 dollars+free shipping. (but those were the good old days)

Alright well first of all thanks again for all the help guys. Now for a not so nice update, sorry if its a bit long

We ended up getting the PNY, plugged it in installed the drivers and updated them, and everything seemed fine, but a few days ago my father told me windows would not boot, the screen would just go black when the windows loading screen should appear, but booting into safe mode seemed to work. When I finally had time to check it out my dad informed me it would no longer boot even going to safe mode, it would just always go to the black screen.

So I first tested by plugging into the normal VGA output to make sure it wasn't just the cards output, same result. I then took out the card and tested, same result. Some people had said that resetting their BIOS settings to default had magically fixed their same problem, but it didn't work for me. So i decided to get out the windows cd and go to the recovery console and do fixmbr and stuff. Now the problem is none of my 2 windows xp cd's would get past the initial loading. Either at a certain point in loading or when it should be going to the Welcome screen, I get a blue screen of death (a STOP: 0x0000007E) resulting from pci.sys. Now im starting to get scared since there is a reference to PCI. I went online and downloaded a Windows XP Recovery Console CD, but got the same results as the normal cd's.

Now I've come back a couple days later to continue trying to fix it. I once again googled around, people had said they got around that error by using a Windows XP SP2 cd, but i was pretty sure one of my cd's was sp2. Anyway I "got" a SP3 cd, and it actually got past the part where the blue screen of death would kill the other cd's. Now another problem arises; there is no option to repair, actually there is no Welcome screen at all. So either it can't detect the original windows, or for some reason the recovery console is not on the cd.

Im pretty frustrated by now, so i just restart the computer and to my surprise windows starts loading! Ok thats nice, even with all my failed attempts I fixed it! But only kinda First thing I notice is the wireless (usb) keyboard and mouse no longer work, thought it might be the batteries, but it wasn't, so i had to bust out the old mouse and keyboard. Next thing I notice is the wireless internet (usb receiver) no longer works.

Anyway, I don't know how any of these problems relate or don't, but maybe someone has any ideas whats up? My not so educated guesses right now are:
1) Bad drivers
2) Power supply problems
3) Overheating problem

Thanks for any help!

Obviously your USB ports/controllers are not working.
This is probably a driver issue by the way you describe the problem.
So maybe uninstalling your USB devices in the device manager will solve it. Next boot windows should detect them and try to reinstall. Or maybe this is a known issue and you can download working drivers from somewhere. Idk.

Or it's a conflict between your graphics card and USB devices. Hasn't occurred to me ever since I'm using XP but it could be a IRQ conflict, which is why a BIOS reset could solve it. Do you have any yellow exclamation marks in the device manager? If yes double click it and check what it says the problem would be.

If that doesn't help use that working CD to reinstall windows.

Sorry, i'm pretty bad at explaining stuff. The USB parts/controllers are detected and are "working", they just dont work The internet never gets past "Acquiring Network Address" or "Renewing IP Address" (this has happened before, but it usually resolves itself with a few connection attempts, it didn't), and the mouse and keyboard do nothing, even after reinstalling their drivers from CD (couldn't update the drivers since no internet, but when I first installed it the drivers on the CD worked before updating to the newest). Like I said im not sure if these two problems are a result of the bigger (black screen startup) problem, im not even sure if the black screen problem was caused by the video card, but of course these problems started a few days after installing it. I've had a lot of problems with wireless mice/keyboards and my internet/router can be picky sometimes, but I thought I would include these since it happened right after the "big problem". And to clarify, I still have not put the video card back into the computer. Oh and there are no yellow exclamations in the hardware manager.

I have already done a fresh install on a seperate partition just in case, but havn't even booted to it since I've just been trying to get the original install to work.

I think your best bet is a fresh OS install. It sounds to me like something important either got deleted or corrupted. If the new partition OS fixes the issues, you know what it is. If it doesn't, we're back to square one.

Ok so I went on the fresh install and installed the wireless mouse+keyboard drivers to test and it did indeed work. I went back to the old install to see if maybe i forgot to restart after installing the drivers, but they still didn't work. I double checked my Hardware Wizard and now there are two yellow exclamation marks on the USB Receivers. Im guessing thats the USB wireless internet and USB wireless mouse+keyboard ports. How do I fix this? Are there like base drivers that goes "under" the driver that I install from CD that are screwed? I already uninstalled and reinstalled the mouse+keyboard driver and it didn't fix it, but i'll try it again (Edit: still didn't work and they both still have yellow exclamation marks).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 27 2010, 2:00 am by poiuy_qwert.

Click the "update driver" thing. Generally windows update will find and install the drivers. If it doesn't, uninstall the drivers (under properties), then install again.

My computer doesn't recognize USB after an improper shutdown, so I know where you're coming from. A lot of times rebooting will work.

First off, is anything else the problem, or is it just these two USB receivers?

When you do install the graphics, make sure you disable the onboard.

Reformat should fix any software errors, but you'll lose all your stuff. How old is the hard drive? If it's 5 years old, it's time to get a new one.

Damn. I just lost a detailed support post... Going to quickly rewrite the essentials.
So your fresh install works just fine? Then don't try to salvage your old OS as it seems corrupted. Make backups and format your hdd then reinstall.

If you have too much data to backup you can buy another hdd, use it for temporary backup and then give it back.

Or you go through the lengthy process and use a partition manager to make a 2nd partition out of your free space and move the data there.
If you have low free space you might need to repeat it a few times. Make sure that in the end your system partition is about 30gb and your data partition get the rest.

Then format your system drive and install fresh. From then on keep your system and your data separated so you'll never have to go through this again just because you need to reinstall windows...
Oh and be sure that you also backup C:\Documents and Settings\ and all subfolders. It contains your desktop, save games, and program settings.

Clicking update drivers will do nothing since I can't access the internet from there? Unless there is a backup stored inside windows somewhere that it has, or would it tell me what driver its trying to get so I can get it on my laptop?

I have dealt with windows long enough to have three HDD's, have one partitioned for both OS's, and afaik all the most essential data on the other HDD's. The thing is my dad and sisters dont really know much abouut computers so I can't be certain that there is nothing important on the old OS's partition (mostly worried about my dads work related stuff). So far everything looks fine other then those two USB Receivers (though I agree there is probably some other/deeper stuff corrupted) so I want to just fix those for now at least and have the second install for a backup OS.

Also, I'm rather scared to put the video card back in without some other opinions on what may have been wrong. The thing that seems most likely to me is the video card drivers corrupted something on install, but then I wonder why booting up got progressively worse instead of just crapping out on the first reboot.

How would I do that? Its something in the BIOS right? I think I did that when I put it in before but I cant remember if i did or if i did it right.

Its almost impossible to tell what exactly went wrong. But I doubt it's a general problem with your graphics card (drivers).
So uninstall your onboard graphics drivers, then restart and go to the BIOS and disable the onboard then turn off without booting to windows and put your PNY back in and boot up and install the drivers.

If the driver is there already and it just isn't automatically using it (this happens sometimes), it will probably pick it up when you do update driver.

In device manager, you just need to disable the onboard. Start -> run -> devmgmt.msc. It will be under display adapters.