My computer=PWNED :(

Best way to handle it is to backtrack your own actions.

Did you touch anything other than the videocard you mention.
-If so, what were they and are you sure you didn't by accident disconnect a powercable that's supposed to be there ?
Did you use the videocard on your old motherboard (assumption false)


What you said yourself, either one of your other parts is showing malfunctions, or you simply missed something while operating the Motherboard.

I can tell you from my own experience though, having a case where the mother board is simply not placed high enough (2 milimeters for me ) and you force it, it could cost you the life of your equipment.
When you do reopen it, make sure you have a table, clean, with plenty of light and room to put your parts, so you can backtrack every step you take.

ok... got home last night and slowly put my system back together and it all is working fine. I was able to snap off the metal "things" that were keeping the video card from seating correctly and now it snaps right into place, but i need to get a new power supply and im out of town until tomorrow. but, the computer is alive. The geh recovery stuff damaged my vista install and this morning when i left my house it was in the process of repairing. so hopefully when i get home it is going to be up and running.

thanks again for all the help...I ended up replacing my HD, and it seems to be working fine now. But i had to do a clean install >.<, get all the drivers, etc. I guess i should be happy that i have a computer again; hopefully i can recover the info from my old HD.

my laptop screen totally bit it today. came home this morning and it was all black, draining the battery and all sorts of restarts fail to correct it. i'll have to send it in to Dell for further diagnostics and hopefully a repair that doesnt include wiping my hard drive...

You could take the HD temporarily out and copy all essential stuff to the HD of your desktop system just in case. That way you could restore it even if some fool wiped it clean.

What kind of Dell is it? If it's a Latitude (and most likely applies to Inspirons too), the ribbon cable that connects the LCD screen to the motherboard can wiggle loose. It's easy to open the case (remove the plastic bar along the top of the keyboard, then remove the keyboard) to expose the innards and find the connector at the upper left of the laptop body. You could also take apart the screen and check where the ribbon cable connects to the LCD, that also tends to get loose. As a test for the first problem, push down on the upper left corner of the plastic bar that runs along the top of the keyboard area and see if you get anything on the display.

it's a shitspiron 6000. and, after i took out the battery, memory and the modem and was about to remove the hard drive, I found out I had to keep the modem and memory in. So I put them back in and tried my luck, putting the battery back in. All's been fine since. Weird...