Have i killed my machine?

Question

I have a computer which is about two years old. It has a P4 M900M2 board and a Radeon GF 7300GT graphics card. Everything was fine until i decided to upgrade one of my DVD writers to blueray. It turned out that my graphics card wasn't man enough, so i have to upgrade. As the new card hadn't arrived i thought i'd increase my ram too. I had to remove the graphics card to remove a stick to see what i had. Upon replacing the ram stick and graphics card and then switching the computer back on i now just get a message on the monitor that it receives no signal. Assuming i hadn't put the card back in correctly, i took it out again and replaced it even though it looked to be fine. Still the same, no signal. I have tried plugging the monitor into the board with the graphics card removed but i get the same...No signal. So, have i killed the card and or the board as well? The new graphics card has arrived but it needs a posh monitor, which i knew about, so i can't plug my monitor into it to see if my old card has gone to the great component heaven in the sky. I could plug my tv into the new card but i haven't got a clue if i would get a display on it without selecting to use the tv first. Problem is, i can't see what is on the screen to select watching on the tv too. I have noticed that on the old card, two of the gold contact 'pins?' are a couple of mm shorter then the rest. With the card placed flat in front of you with the monitor sockets on the left, the 'pins' facing away from you with the big heatsink underneath, it is the extreme left hand 'pin' on top. It is 1mm shorter than the rest. If you turn the card over with the monitor sockets still on the left but now with the heatsink on top and the 'pins' facing towards you, the other short 'pin' is second in from the right.Again 1mm shorter than the rest. Is this as it should be or have i damaged it? If i have, have i also killed the mother board? Before touching the components, i held on the the unpainted copper water pipe below the radiator and had my hands touching the inside of the case when removing and replacing the card and ram, so i don't think i've staticked it to death, or have i? The new blueray burner was in the case but not connected up at the time. I think the board is a 2.8 dual core, but i'm not too sure. The serial number is 7710690034 if that helps and a P4 M900M2.
Thanks for any advice.
Merry christmas, or happy december if you don't do that sort of thing

Answer 1

Quote from: Stu on 27-December-09, 19:35:50
XFX is a hardware manufacturer, like MSI. Radeon is a product of ATI/AMD, a chipset manufacturer. Geforce is a product of Nvidia, also a chipset manufacturer.
Your card is a XFX Geforce 7300GT, with a Nvidia Geforce 7300 chipset.
Ha ha, after further investigation i realise what i've done. The old suspect(?) card is XFX, but my new one is an ATI Radeon HD 3600 256Mb PCI-E, hence the confusion. Or is it my age? Or the beer?
Anyway, now we have all had a gigle at the idiot who can't read, can anybody offer any advice re my original question? Catastrophic failure of operator, graphics card and or motherboard? What do you think?  Any opinions? Having to use my old computer which is doing my head in.
Vista loads fine, and reads my modem installation disc so i can get online. But i can't find my vista serial number so can't register. I can find my code for XP, hard to lose as it's on the side of the case, but it won't read the drivers on modem disc so can't get online.
I sometimes wonder what wrongs i have been guilty of in a past life to get penalised with anything computer derived like i do in this one