Laptop Doesn't show video after bios

[Francisck]

Here is the deal, I purchased an old dell latitude laptop (5 years old) added ram and a new hard drive,

Installed xp and started to install the video driver...

The computer after the install a minute or so later just restarted...

after the bios there was no display, I tried to remove memory with no luck, put in a different stick and still no luck.

So i figured it might be a bad drive... I inserted my xp cd and guess what! after the one time boot options and i select the cd drive there is no display!

Now I'm pretty tech savy but this problem has me perplexed, What am i missing?

Hope you guys can help me!

Best Regards,
Francisco

 

[XCtechST]

Did you have any extensive use of the laptop before you bought it and/or before you tried installing the OS on the new drive? Sounds like Windows choked when installing the video driver because of one of these possibilities:

1) The video card is going out
2) The BIOS has an incorrect setting for video (RAM allotted, mode, etc.)
3) If setup asked you to supply a driver for the video card, perhaps the wrong driver was supplied.

Either way, this doesn't sound like much to do with the drive. If you have checked the BIOS and are sure you supplied the right driver (if asked), I would get a hold of a hardware diagnostic program or take it to a trusted local repair shop for hardware analysis.