As I said, the hardware installation went well, and the card seems to have a good seat in its slot. However, when I installed the drivers and restarted my computer, the card does not begin to work.

I am using Windows 7 Home Premium x64 SP1, and my computer is a Dell Inspiron 580.

I had Intel Integrated graphics before, and when I tried to uninstall it, it would simply reinstall itself with Windows Update, so I used Device Manager to disable it. I followed all the hardware installation instructions to the T. After installing the latest drivers using the CATALYST installation manager, everything goes fine, but at the 'Finished' stage, under 'Actions', I am informed that "Installation complete (warnings occurred during installation). View log for details." However, when I open the log, there are no errors displayed, and the Final Status of both the AMD APP SDK Runtime and the AMD Catalyst Install Manager is 'Success'.

I use a program called Speccy to look at all of my computer's specifications, and with the card plugged in, my middle PCI-E slot, which is the one I used, says it's in use, so clearly the computer recognizes that there is something plugged in, but doesn't do anything about it.

I'm sorry if I left out some piece of information, but I've done my best to explain the problem. Could someone please help to shed some light on why my gfx card refuses to work?

Hi I looked at the specs for your system a 300 watt cheap power supply is not enough to power that card properly. When you install the video card it goes in the long slot not in a short pcie slot, Before you put the card in you need to go into bios and change the video access mode to pcie-x16 other wise it can still try to use the onboard video. 

When I installed the card, I made sure to put it into the right slot, here is a photo of the two slots that were available:

http://i.imgur.com/aB26e.jpg

I put it into the bottom one, which I believe is correct. I also tried to go into BIOS and look for those options, but there were no options like that in BIOS. I think my BIOS might be somewhat limited, since I know from previous experience that it also lacks a Wake-on-LAN feature, too.

Edit:

If it's my power supply, would getting a new one allow me to use the card like it was intended?

Edited: 12/25/2012 at 05:15 PM by ClassiestMedic

Well it would only fit into the black PCIe x16 slot (the long one, not the two x1 short slots), but like Hammey said the 300w stock POS power supply won't power it, try and game with it and it'll crash your compy and could damage the card itself. You're going to want to get a Corsair TX550 before you go any farther.

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Okay, thank you! I'll get one of those and hopefully it will work from there.

I didn't expect to understand what was going wrong so quickly! Thanks for the fast reply time, I dislike support forums where my questions are stagnant for days.

Hi just another thought that is a small pc case you will need some air flow in it to keep that card cool I see on the back of the case there is a spot for a fan make sure you put one in there. Also once you get the card installed and working it is a gaming card you should install the monitor program that came with it like msi afterburner and make sure it is not running to hot.