A bit of a problem.

Reamer Fanny

I have been upgrading my Dell Dimension 4550 and most recently added some SATA ports via the PCI. I wanted to clean some of the dust that had collected between the heatsink and fan, so I removed the heatsink with the lever, no problem there so I put it back on and powered it up(all but power cable and monitor cable are connected) the fan spins but the monitor is still in standby saying no signal, so I fiddled around with the graphics card and made sure is was secure, yet I am still having this problem. Could I have damaged something here? I was using an anti-static wrist band at the time as a precaution.

jimoc

Does the board also have onboard graphics?
It might be that you could have reset the bios inadvertantly and if there is an onboard graphics connector it might have been given priority.

Also, check to make sure that the connectors to the graphics card are still in place, there should be a power connector and a smaller header connector for the fan control.

Reamer Fanny

The graphics cards is internal(not onboard) it is a Nvidia Geforce fx 5200 128MB, I have also swapped this with the older graphics card(16mb) that came with it but no joy The black and red cable from the fan is connecting to the motherboard, the fan spins when it's powered on.

Reamer Fanny

I would also like to add the heatsink was stuck to the cpu, so maybe I will have to detach the cpu from the heatsink back onto the motherboard and then reseat the heatsink?

majiktripp

That could be your problem, the issue your having sounds like a cpu/motherboard issue not graphics related. Remove the heatsink again, and hopefully the cpu is ok (ie. no bent pins or the likes) at which point you should detach it from the heatsink if its still stuck to it, then reapply some thermal paste if you can get your hands on some and resit the cpu properly and then reattach the heatsink and cooling fan.

Solitaire

You may have borked/cooked your CPU. Carefully disassemble the mess, reinstall the CPU properly, carefully clean the top of the CPU (heatspreader) and the bottom of the heatsink with a dab of something (usually DVD-cleaning solution; seems to be the only way to get isopropyl over here!) to get stale old material off then apply a very thin layer of thermal grease and reseat the heatsink. See if it comes back to life

polyfusion

Does your case have a shroud over the CPU heatsink, with a fan for sucking air from the heatsink? If yes, maybe the fan is disconnected. Could be a protective measure, preventing startup if the cooling fan doesn't start.

Also, reseat the RAM while you're in there. Hell, reseat everything, graphics card, PCI-SATA card.

How did you clean out the dust? Vacuum, compressed air, wire brush?

Reamer Fanny

it is sorted now, the cpu was stuck to the heatsink so i wedged it off with a flathead screwdriver reseated the cpu and then the heat sink, had to try a number of times before the cpu was seated correctly i found that the devices(graphics, hdd, etc) wouldn't initialize if it was in the wrong direction

leninbenjamin

Solitaire wrote: »

(usually DVD-cleaning solution; seems to be the only way to get isopropyl over here!)

I bought a 400ml of the stuff today in Maplin. 'twas expensive though, round a tennor.

Marcface

leninbenjamin wrote: »

I bought a 400ml of the stuff today in Maplin. 'twas expensive though, round a tennor.

Bugger that, just buy a box of 200 alcohol swabs I usually get em for around 5-6euro, absolutely dead handy for gettin rid of that stubborn shiz.