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Inspiron 531 graphics card
I bought a Inspiron 531 with discrete graphics card back in October 2007. Unfortunately the card died on us recently and I'm now looking to replace it. The problem is I can't remember exactly what the card was other than it was by Nvidia and can't get the pc to switch on without much faffing about. As I want something of at least a similar capacity, does anybody have any idea what it would be or where the info would be stored. Apologies for my ignorance and thanks in advance.
osprey4
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December 27th, 2011 04:00
Hi Jec1968,
The easiest way to figure this out is to pull out the bad video card. Here is the procedure. <ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>
You could even post a picture here--I'm sure someone can tell what it is.
I'm pretty sure your system has integrated video, so once you pull out the old video card, you should be able to connect the monitor to the VGA port on the motherboard and fire up the system. It may be necessary to boot to the BIOS and enable the integrated graphics controller.
jec1968
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December 27th, 2011 23:00
Thanks, osprey4, thats a very useful link. I did manage to find another way though. With a bit of digging, I managed to get the original build specs off the dell website itself, just needed the machine number and access to my account.
osprey4
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December 28th, 2011 05:00
Ok, let me know if you need further help.
AJDrob
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January 7th, 2012 21:00
osprey4
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January 8th, 2012 04:00
Hi AJDrob,
Why don't you start a new thread?
AJDrob
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January 9th, 2012 13:00
Ok, here's the deal Osprey4. I was listening to music from MP-3 files when suddenly it stopped. I tried to shut down the player, but the entire system was locked. Ct;-Alt-Del did not work either. So I cut the power to it. When I started the machine back up, all I had on the monitor was line gibberish, first blue colored lines, then multi-colored lines. The drives looked like they were trying to load, but all I get is multicolored gibberish on the monitor, after the initial 'Dell' when the monitor is first powered.
I really don't think the hard drives are bad, but I guess they could be. So I figured after reading some posts here that I would pull the nvidia 8300 card out that came with it and hopefully it will run off the motherboard? Is that correct?