Acer 5920G ATI replacement video card not recognized but boots into Windows with black screen

Hello,
I got a 5920G with a defective 8600M GT. Because I could not get the Nvidia card back to life with the usual baking/hot air methods I bought an ATI 3650 ( VG.86M06.004 ) from Ebay that according to the seller should be compatible with the 5920G.

However, the card is not recognized by the mainboard. No matter if the card is plugged in or not, the laptop boots into windows with no video. Once up, I can log in to windows via remote desktop with no problems from another machine connected to the same network, install drivers and so on.

In the device manager, the ATI card is not shown as unknown device or as video card, its just as it would not be there. I already flashed the BIOS to the latest version (also via remote desktop) and after that to the MXM V3 mod BIOS by .NetRolller 3D but it did not help. I measured directly at the connector pads of the card that it gets the proper voltage on all power supply pins.

Now the question is:

Is the motherboard defective or is the video card the one to blame? Or is the card just not compatible with the 5920G?

Can anyone tell me what happens normally if one plugs an incompatible video card into the laptop? Does it show up in the device manager?

 

Can you post high-res photo of your videocard?

 

My guess is that something has happened to your motherboard. Usually 5920G wont boot if there is no GPU installed. Maybe it varies from revision to revision (A to F, most are G and F), but at least mine wont.

 

My 5739g is able to boot without VGA onboard.

 

You have built-in graphics, right?

 

No, I don`t have built-in graphics.

Edited - I`m sorry, I was talking about with my second acer with i5 processor. Yes, there is built-in. Stupid situation.

 

I took some photos of the Card and uploaded them here: Galerie: ATI MXM - abload.de

The Motherboard is revision F.

What does it usually do with no graphics card installed? Put out any beep codes? The chipset does not have integrated graphics on this board.

 

I haven't tried with rev. F, but again it is highly likely that it wont boot without GPU. Have you checked the GPU with another notebook?

 

@palladium1972,
did you solve the problem? I have exactly the same frustrating situation with installing a HD3650 in Aspire 5920G :-/

 

... and that strange: few days ago my ancient 5290G stopped working and now I have problem in a way similar to described by palladium1972. Now laptop will start with the black screen - I can tell that Windows is loading and I can log on "blindly" if you know what I mean. there are no beeps from BIOS and during my fiddling with graphic card I managed to make it working for one more time (connected to TV via RGB cable with picture on both LCD and TV screens). Only difference is that my GPU is nVidia. Now I'm waiting to come back from my holidays to buy new Acer and if I will still have some money I will by another MXM card to try if I can fix it. Again.