Upgrade Dell B110

[Randal1800]

I have an old Dell B110 that I wanted to upgrade for my kids. I bought 2Gb of RAM and Win 7. When the components arrived, I replaced the memory and proceeded to upgrade the OS to Win 7. Generally everything went smooth. The resolution on the monitor was low because the on board video card did not have Win 7 drivers, but I knew that going in and expected to purchase a newer supported video card. So I put the case back together. The next day I turned on the computer, heard the HD access, noticed the light on the monitor go from yellow to green and back to yellow. The monitor never came on, yet the HD continured to run. I checked the monitor on another computer and it works. I replaced the new RAM with the old thinking that that was the problem, but it was not. I attempted to boot from the new Win 7 disk to reinstall the OS, but that did not work. I'm out of ideas, any body have any ideas I can try?

Randal1800

[RickyTick]

hey Randal.
I moved your post into it's own thread.

This sounds like a driver issue, but I'm not sure. Can you boot to the BIOS screen?

[Randal1800]

Thanks RickyTick,
I have read the forums for a couple of years but have never really been adept at working with in them.

I cannot boot to the BIOS screen. I get nothing on the monitor. Worse yet is this Dell did not come with an Win XP OS disk, it has a restore disk and I'm not sure I can get back to the original state of a working computer.

Randal1800

[RickyTick]

Any chance you can try a different monitor on this system?

[Randal1800]

Yes,
I will do that this weekend. I also was reading another forum and they said they had a similar problem with a Linksys wireless adapter. When I installed the Win 7, I was unable to get the wireless adapter to work. It could see the network, but not connect. Linksys basically said it was out of warrenty and they would not help for free, but that's another matter. I will remove the adaptor and see if that makes a difference.

I'll be in touch. Randy

[Randal1800]

Rickytick, You were absolutely correct, the monitor must be bad. It was coincidence that it went bad at the same time I upgraded. Thanks for saving me the frustration.

The video card is not supported by Win 7, so I need to upgrade that also. I checked with Dell for an upgrade and they recommended Vision TEK Radeon X1300 256 MB card. I looked at that card on Newegg and it says that it is Win 2000/XP compatible, but not Win 7. Where can I go to find a better replacement?

Randal1800

[RickyTick]

The monitor may not be bad. It's possible that the Win7 driver does not default to a resolution that the monitor will accept. But if the monitor doesn't work on a different system, and a different monitor does work on yours, then that kind of verifies it.

You are very limited on video card options. About the best you can do would be that x1300, 9400GT or 9500GT, and these may be pushing the upper limits of you power supply, which I think is 250 watts.

Sorry to throw this out there, but have you considered a new computer?

[Randal1800]

Yes the monitor is bad. It does not work on any system, including another Dell, but another monitor does work on the B110.

I already considered an alternative. I built a Super PC with the help of this website, it works great!

This upgrade is for my daughters to do school work on, does not have to be super.

[RickyTick]

Sounds good. You could even go with an 8400GS and be fine since she's probably not a hardcore gamer anyway. ;)
Maybe something like this. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814139038