Win7 will not detect a video card

[Maxwell]

As part of the Frankenbox I'm putting together (thanks to the parts sent to me by several folks), I acquired a 9800GT. When I stick it in my current box, Win7x64 doesn't see it.

I have a 570 in there already with the 266.58 drivers. The driver series is (supposedly) compatible with the 9800GT, but the OS doesn't even see a card in that slot. In the Device Manager, it only lists the 570. Nothing else there. The card is seated well in the slot (slot is not bad - moved the 570 there and it was fine) and all connections are solid. The fan on the card spins, but Windows refuses to detect anything.

I've seen others online with similar problems, but no one actually links to a solution that I can find.

Help? Thoughts?

[Zytozux]

Have you tried it with just the 9800gt in there?

[Maxwell]

No, but I don't really want to try it if Windows can't even tell there's something in the slot... even an old 9500GT PCI card gets detected...

[joker]

Got all the power cords plugged into the card??

[Maxwell]

Got all the power cords plugged into the card??

Yep.

[joker]

I am going to guess that you have reinstalled the drivers at least once and switched the cards to different slots........Any BIOS mods to the new card?? Did you switch around the power connectors between the 2 cards?? Im just throwing stuff out there at this point. I have never tried to run 2 Nvidia cards in 1 box before.

[Fire$torm]

No, but I don't really want to try it if Windows can't even tell there's something in the slot... even an old 9500GT PCI card gets detected...

Well, if the card was going to kill your system it would have done so already So it will not hurt anything to try the card alone. When you boot up with just that card hit the F8 key after the BIOS startup screen but before you see the Windows logo. Then highlight Safe Mode and press Enter. Why do a Safe Mode boot? Because this will force Windows to do a fresh read and load of essential drivers and programs.

On a normal boot Windows loads from its system cache folders. And anything read from these, Windows has defined certain assumptions about the hardware that uses them from previous boot-ups. So Safe Mode bypasses all this.

[Al]

WIN 7 needs a dummy plug on the 2nd card or it won't be seen.
Al

[Fire$torm]

WIN 7 needs a dummy plug on the 2nd card or it won't be seen.
Al

Hi Al,
If that card was an ATI then that would be true for all current versions of Windows. nVidia cards do not have that handicap.

[Maxwell]

What F$ said - plus, I had a monitor plugged into the card anyway...

So, I just tried it with only the 9800GT in the system. Nothing. The computer turned on, but nothing ever showed on the screen. Couldn't boot into Safe Mode since I could see nothing.

Is there a system tweak I can make somewhere to force detection of something in a PCIe slot?