[brettjv]

Okay, I just watched your video. Lulz ... dunno who told you those steps, but ... they're WAY more involved than they should be, and arguably 'wrong' in many regards.

HOWEVER ... none of what you did 'sorta wrong' in regards to the driver installation matters one whit, because drivers are NOT in play when your PC is Posting/pre-Windows. The fact that your 'Dell' startup screen, and the text-mode stuff prior to Windows safe-mode starting, is jacked up like that ... it means that you have bigger issues than just drivers.

If you bought this card at a retail store, you should return it and tell them it's broken. Now, it MAY not actually be broken, but if it's relatively easy to try a different one of the same card, it's worth a try as the simplest option. I'd say there's about a 50% chance that's the issue.

Other possibilities include:
1) Your motherboard plain won't support that card, even though it's got a PCI-Ex slot and all that. This can happen w/older board and newer cards. If that came w/a x300, I'm guessing it's quite an old machine, yes? BTW, you didn't tell us what processor you have ... what is it, do you know?
2) Your mobo won't support that card unless you do a 'flash' to the latest firmware available for the board. You may not feel comfortable doing this at your level of expertise. It's not that hard, but if it's done wrong, you could end up 'bricking' your system, which means having to send your PC in for service to get it fixed.
3) Do you happen to know if that mobo has on 'onboard' graphics capability along with the X300 Card? Is there a VGA looking plug on the back I/O panel anywhere? If so, then the issue may be that the OB graphics aren't disabled, and it didn't matter with the x300, but it does with the new card. If it does, let us know and we'll help you get it disabled.

For future reference, this is actually the proper steps of what you should've done, start to finish:

1) With the old card in place, go into the Windows Control Panel/Uninstall Software, and hit the ATI Uninstall Utility, and choose to remove all ATI/AMD GRAPHICS software. Not the chipset stuff.
2) Shutdown, and install the new card
3) Startup, and go ahead and let windows auto-install drivers. At that point, it should either install a generic VGA driver, or a generic ATI driver made by Microsoft and included in Windows. It may then tell you to restart, and if so, go ahead.
4) Upon reboot, put in the driver disc, install the drivers on the disc, and restart.
5) At that point, aside from adjust resolution to your native size (if it isn't already), you're done.

Seriously, that should be all you have to do.

However, what you did, whilst WAY overly arduous, shouldn't have actually borked anything, because you did, at one point or another, basically follow those steps. The only thing you did really quite wrong was installing the new drivers before the card.

You see, gfx cards are NOT USB devices, you don't install drivers first, you install them after the device. But ... it shouldn't have 'broken' anything the way you did it, and this problem is NOT drivers at all, because drivers aren't active during the POST

The only other 'easy' thing I can suggest is just REALLY making sure the card is seated properly. But unless your board has an onboard gfx capability, you should return the card for another one. Then just put it in, attach monitor cable, and if your Dell screen still looks jacked up ... you're done ... unless you wanna see if there's a newer BIOS for your board, and 'flash' it, if there is.

 

[brettjv]

Okay, well since you ordered on NE (thus it's not super convenient to exchange it), AND your board apparently has onboard graphics (does a VGA cable plug into this jack you're talking about?), I would give one last thing a try, and that is going into your BIOS and looking to see what's selected as default video out.

To get into the BIOS, watch closely on the Dell startup screen, there should be a message that says 'Press X Key for Setup'. Typically it's Del, Esc, F1 or F8. It has to be pressed before that screen disappears, so if you miss it, press ctrl-alt-del quickly to reboot.

Once you're in setup aka BIOS aka CMOS (which should be really basic), look around for anything that suggests an option of which video out to favor or initialize first. You want to choose something that sounds like it's NOT the onboard. Sometimes it'll say "PEG" or something that suggests PCI-Express. Choose that, and try again. If you still get the jacked up Dell screen ... send the card back and try another.

If you don't, though, and everything looks okay, chances are everything will work fine after that. Might want to re-install the drivers from the disc though as you got errors the first time ... hopefully this time you won't

 

[brettjv]

Well, I would try both settings, since it's so easy to do.

If no luck there, the only other possibility other than a bad card is that the board and card are incompatible. It *might* be fixable w/a bios flash, but no guarantee, and like I say flashing a mobo bios is inherently somewhat risky, esp. for a novice or if having a working PC at all times is 'business critical' because if you bork it, you'll have to have it serviced to be fixed.

Might as well try sending back the card for a replacement, or if there's someone else who's machine you can try the card in, that might be worth trying as well before you do ... cause if it does work in someone else's machine, then it's likely a compatibility problem w/your board, in which case you'd want to angle for a refund.