PC help?

[Psyduck]

After some help for a friend who's just built his own PC - any ideas?

just built a new pc, using abit ip35 not e nor pro, and after inserting wireless card and tv card in pci slots they are not registering when i turn on my comp. using vista 64 if it makes any differnece???


He's got a 520watt PSU so we don't think it's power, although he says there seems to be another power connecter on the board he's not currently using so maybe it's that? Any other suggestions? I'm a bit out of touch with PC stuff atm...

[eastyy]

well only thing i can suggest is just make sure the seated in fully

also alot of motherboards have two power connectors one the standard one and the other a small 4 pin square connector

[briareos_kerensky]

Downloaded the manual, if you're referring to the 4-pin connector near the PCI-E is just for PCI-E devices. Also, I can't recall any PCI card requiring auxiliary power (if not some Voodoo prototypes), the wi-fi and tv cards are completely fine with such a PSU.
First, check the device manager and see if you have two devices with the yellow question mark, that means that the system recognizes that there's some kind of hardware but there are no installed drivers.
The next step is to find Vista 64 drivers and install them. You can also try XP drivers, but you'll have to manually force them and they could make the system unstable - I don't really know how well Vista handles XP drivers in compatibility mode.
If they aren't even recognized in the device manager, try them on an other computer or see if XP or any kind of CD-based Linux distro recognizes them
. If XP or Linux recognizes them the cards might be completely incompatible with Vista (unlikely), if noone recognizes them, first try a card in the first PCI slot, boot the system and see what happens.
Then install the other card in the third slot and see what happens.

[Psyduck]

Thanks so far guys. I've a feeling the key moment came when he mentioned he hadn't installed any drivers for his motherboard, but we'll see tomorrow...