Where to begin!?!

So, I just home from visiting my sister in the hosptial and I go to turned on my computer. It started up as usual. The only thing is with my new video card, the screen doesn't like to recognize the video card until windows is completely up and running. It happens somethings, but even since I installed the drivers that came with the videocard.

Anyways, 2-3 minutes elapse and I'm still starting at a blank screen, I move the mouse around - I press enter. Nothing happens. I unplug/replug the monitor cable. So I decide to restart it the PC. I hold the power button and she turns off. Now I restart it.

She warms up and I had the HDD spinning and the Mobo making the typical beep noise. CD drives spinning too and then suddently, she turns her self off and few seconds she restarts herself and goes through this loop.

What the hell is going on? 

Yeah I'm sure there is people all across the world with the same problem.

This should help you: http://bit.ly/un6NPD

Maybe power supply is shot or boot is shot

Hehe, Omniscient - MR isn't the first place I went too in search of answers. ;-)

Maybe the video card is too powerful for your pc?, do you have enough RAM, tried uninstalling and reinstalling etc?

Defo sounds like the PC is struggling since you installed it.

This happen to our PC not to long ago we just had to wipe out all the files.

Is your video card compatibile and were drivers installed

Had a similar issue once. Turned out to be issues with the motherboard from when the new Video card was installed.

I dusted her out and unplugged all the cables and tightened things up inside, and she worked. She had a similar hiccip this morning, but managed to boot up correctly.
I think it might be the PSU, it is 550W and the new video card requires a PSU with a minimum of 550W 

Thats your issue there definitley then, that means it is taking 100% allocation, so anything else wont work properlly (or go reaaaaaaaaallllllly sloooooooowwly)

It will definitely happen again and continue to happen unless you get a newer PSU with more wattage.

;P

Well Africanus,

You might have enough watts but not enough amps, if you buy a new PSU make sure it have enough of both. This just happened to me and a new PSU didn't work. I have asked around and everyone tells me.

1. RAM - Remove all but one stick and see if it works. Might have one fryed
2. PSU - buy one with enough Watts and amps
3. Motherboard is fryed- S.O.L.

Try it in there order (easiest to hardest to do)

When choosing a PSU add up the required wattage by each component: Motherboard, optical drives, hard drives, video card, processor, ram, and any other peripheral device. Once you've added that all together, multiply it by 30% and add that to it then you've got a good estimate on the wattage of a psu you should buy. The 30% gives you some wiggle room to add USB devices and more peripherals.

My laptop did this a few months ago and it was the HDD shot, I ran a test and called hp, they sent me a new one and installed it and it's back to perfecto.

If not hdd, it could be the video card. Run a test during startup and see what code pops up.