HELP! I think this is beyond my repair skills!

O.k. I have a "prehistoric" HP pavillion mx70 w/ windows xp home edition. I was just boosting my ram from 128 megs to 512 megs of ram. I slid in the stick, turned it on and nothing happened. (literally). I tried this about 3 to 4 times with no success. (yes I checked to make sure both sides were "snapped" in.) To make a long story short, I tried it one more time, this time I received this high pitch beeping sound (from my tower!) I knew right then that this was "not" good at all. I asked a friend of mine who found a problem... My p.c. uses the "pc2100" type of ram. I bought a "pc2400". Fortunately he had some spare sticks of ram that were pc2100's so I took them home and gave it a try... I still get that annoying beep! My screen is black, and the light on my monitor is orange.

Now this is the strange part. When I turn it on, my hard drive is spinning and it appears to be going about it's business just fine. It's just my monitor that won't react. If I unplug the a/v cord from my tower, the screen will actually "turn on" (the light turns green and everything) and the monitor will tell me to check my a/v connections; but as soon as I reconnect them, the monitor goes back into "sleep mode", the light turns orange, and once again i'm looking at a black screen. Now this leaves me with one devestating conclusion.... I probably fried my video card... Now the only problem i'm having with that conclusion is this.... My "stock" video card is integrated into my motherboard! I actually attempted to use a different videocard, but I was unable to bypass the original! This really sucks, and if someone could shed some light on this dark situation I would really appreciate it. Heck, I would hug you if I could! :omg:

usually I would find where the Clear Cmos pin is, clear the cmos and that plug in the ram again.

Consult your mobo manual to see what's up.

Grumble Grumble Grumble

This sounds very very bad... If you forgot to unplug your power cord before inserting your RAM, (and ATX motherboards are always live with power, even if the system is turned off...), chances are you fried your motherboard...

I'm going to try and locate this "clear c-moss pin..." Any idea what it may look like? Oh, I definately did "not" have my p.c. plugged in when I did this. I'm a rookie, but i'm not "that" new. (lol) If you could give me some sort of idea as to what this "pin" looks like, I would appreciate it. :)

Grumble Grumble Grumble

Try removing ALL the cards and disk drive cables and see if the bios comes up, as sometimes a unseated PCI card will prevent the system from booting...

If you have a manual to the motherboard, they should tell you where it is. If not try to find the manufacturer of your mobo and download the instruction booklet. Hopefully you have a friend who would lend you their computer.

O.k.... I'm going to strip my computer to a shell & put it back together. This way I will know for sure that there are no "loose ends" anywhere. I'm still trying to locate my c-moss though... the manuel I have is a simple "users manuel" that doesn't go into any details at all! Looks like i'm going to have to do this the old fashioned way...

Using higher-frequency-capable RAM modules wouldn't cause this. I'd personally bet on the breaking of the MB by pushing the RAM onto a loose board. The better possibility is that something (the other RAM module or some card) got partially unplugged during the bend. The solution would definitely lie in the disassembly of everything and an attempt to power it on with minimal equipment connected.