So I've been trying to get one of my old computers fired back up and I had it going for a while yesterday. But there's a problem with the fan on the graphics card: it's loose and it keeps making a really annoying scratching noise on the side of the heatsink. So I unhook the thing and try to tighten the fan, but no dice, the screws holding the fan onto the heatsink are really tight and they strip like butter. So I figure I'll just disable the fan, considering that I'm not playing games or anything like that. The noise was annoying to the point that I couldn't work so I just put the thing back in with the fan unplugged.

Then comes the problem. I boot up and everything is fine until I get to the windows starting screen (not the login screen). After a couple of seconds the monitor goes back and hangs for a bit, then displays the no signal message before shutting off.

Ok so I just figure unplugging the fan might be a bad idea. I plug it back in, put the card back in, triple check to make sure everything is secure, and start the computer back up. Same problem.

So I try playing with the bios settings. Same problem. I think it might be a power source problem, so I unhook two non-critical fans, the floppy drive, and one of the optical drives. Same problem. So I kick the thing. Same problem.

I'm probably just going to go out and buy a new card, but I'm wondering if it might be an issue someone is familiar with and can help me out with. Any ideas?

Sounds like it is probably your video card. Definitely sounds like an overheating problem.

Does the power supply smell burnt? Are the voltages correct in the bios? I doubt the problem is with the power supply, but if either of these things seem weird - it might warrant looking into it more.

If you aren't playing games or doing any kind of intense graphics work, you should be fine getting a cheap replacement card, thats probably what I would do.

I fixed it. I went out and bought a new card and everything is going good now. The cheapest card I could find actually had twice the memory so I'm happy. It wasn't an overheating problem (I've ran it with the fan disabled before). I think it was driver related because it was working in linux under generic drivers.