im fairly new to putting together PCs, and the few i have compiled have always had an onboard Video card, but a friend of mine ordered some parts to put a new one together and he purchased a MoBo without onboard video, its an ASUS m4n72-e mobo and a radeon hd 4850 card. when i turn on the system to start the vista install i cannot get anything to pop up on his screen to get it all going. what exactly is it that im missing/dont understand yet?

You should always test the board outside the case. That said, common errors include not connecting the CPU fan to the right header. Not connecting the required auxillary power connections to both the motherboard and the video card. Is there any sign of life?

all of the fans are going, the dvd drive recognizes the vista disk, i can hear it reading, all the lights go on, the power cord specifically for the pcie expansion boards are connected, everything seems to be going smoothly until the monitor reads nothing

Do you have the auxillary power connectors in place? Try reseating the graphic card too.

Do you get the single POST beep at startup?

Is the display setting in the BIOS saying PCI or AGP and what kind of bus does the 4850 card run on? John W. Borelli IT Specialist OmniIT borelli35