Trouble installing MSI R9 270x twin frozr

Question

I recently purchased and installed the MSI Radeon r9 270x ( have 64 bit vista on an HP pavilion, intel quad core 2), and although I have video and can see/use my desktop and internet browser, the card does not appear to actually be detected or identified by the computer and the drivers do not appear to be installed correctly. I followed the rather rudimentary instructions provided in the "Quick User's guide" that came with the box, which basically explained that all I needed to do was to physically install the video card and then put in the accompanying CD and click on the 'install drivers' icon on the autorun menu. However, nothing happened. When I did first turn on the computer with the new card, I never really got a 'found new hardware' window. However, every time I restart the computer, a window pops up saying "Windows needs to install driver software for your video controller (VGA compatible)", and even though I click on "locate and install driver software" it always comes up when I start the computer.
So, I started installing the various software from the CD - actually when I click on "install VGA drivers" it automatically starts installing afterburner. Clicking on the icon at the top labeled 'driver', nothing happens (including the first time I tried using the CD).  Since this didn't work I tried looking to the internet to see what was wrong, and it occurred to me that I hadn't uninstalled drivers for my ATI radeon 4350 which was stock. I found that to do that I needed to uninstall ATI catalyst from my program list, which I did, but that still didn't change anything. I ended up reinstalling it anyway from the CD (which I assume is a more recent version).
After installing afterburner, then I tried installing Live Update 5, which claimed it was going through and installing all the relevant drivers. After spending some time downloading and installing all these drivers, nothing had changed and PC games still won't work. If I open up device manager, no video card is listed under "sound, video, and game controllers" and under 'other devices', there is listed "PCI device" and "Video controller (VGA compatible)", and the details listed for each of these is "unknown". Also, under display settings, if I click on the adapter tab, the details/properties all say "unavailable".
I've clearly done something wrong, but I have no idea what, and the instructions that came with this thing have been effectively useless. I'm looking forward to some good help on this. Thanks.

Answer 1

Quote
on an HP pavilion, intel quad core 2
Be aware that this totally outdated machine might be not supporting latest generation vgas. It is already quite surprising that it actually shows an image and not a black screen as PCI-E Gen3 radeons usually don't work in PCI-E 1.1 slots. Still even a current machine usually requires a bios update for the latest vgas and your machine is surely far beyond any bios support. Furthermore a HP machine coming with a Radeon 4350 by default is surely using a cheap and low-wattage oem psu being insufficient for a R9 270X.
First check that psu. It needs to be at 24A on +12v and 500W minimum. If your pc is using a weaker psu there is no need about thinking how to get the R9 to work until you have a new psu.
If psu has been checked run >>Driver Fusion<< in safe mode and remove all current AMD drivers (freeware removal is enough). After reboot install the latest >>AMD Catalyst Display Driver<<. It might be needed to install >>Microsoft .NET4 Framework<< as well. Then retry.
If still no help try >>clearing cmos<< and retry. If that also fails you are most likely facing a compatibility issue.